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Overview
- An internal comparison must include salary, employment costs, software, hardware, recruitment, training, management, leave cover, and idle capacity.
- A partner comparison must state the named capacity, inclusions, QA, management, software, leave cover, mobilisation, change terms, taxes, and exclusions.
- In-house capacity becomes more attractive as demand becomes consistently high, predictable, repeatable, and strategically important to retain.
- A hybrid arrangement can retain standards and design responsibility internally while adding external capacity for defined work.
An hourly quote and an annual salary cover different things. A useful comparison includes software, management, review time and the cost of idle capacity. Use your own costs and current quotes to compare the two options on the same basis.
Compare in-house costs
Salary is only one input. Add employment costs, software, hardware, recruitment, training, leave cover, management, office or remote-work support, and idle time between projects using the figures that apply to your company and location.
Scroll sideways to compare
| Cost line | Input from your records |
|---|---|
| Base salary for the equivalent role | Current local salary or payroll record |
| Benefits, payroll taxes, insurance | Employer-specific annual total |
| Software and collaboration seats | Current vendor quote or invoice |
| Workstation, IT, office or remote support | Annualised internal cost |
| Recruitment, onboarding and training | Actual or budgeted annualised cost |
| Management, leave cover and idle capacity | Hours and cost from the review period |
What the outsourced equivalent costs
Obtain a current written quote for the equivalent role or work package. Confirm whether it includes software, hardware, QA, management, leave cover, infrastructure, meetings, revisions, taxes, currency risk, and mobilisation. Two structural differences can matter more than the headline rate:
- Check how capacity can change: notice periods, minimum term, available disciplines, limits and how the team leaves the project.
- Compare the partner’s start-up plan with the time your own team takes to recruit and onboard people.
When an in-house team fits
Consider keeping a role in-house when continuity, supervision or retained knowledge make it important to your delivery. Compare the following conditions with your actual pipeline:
- Your pipeline is reliable and utilisation stays consistently high across the review period.
- Your project types repeat, so proprietary templates and content libraries compound in value.
- The role is client-facing coordination where physical presence in OAC meetings matters.
- You are building standards and a BIM culture that you want owned internally.
When a hybrid arrangement fits
A hybrid can keep standards, design judgement, statutory responsibility, and client-facing coordination in-house while assigning defined production packages to external capacity. Spetia can be evaluated for that role through a bounded pilot inside the required templates and CDE, using agreed quality, communication, turnaround, and total-cost measures.
Technical references
Sources for the definitions and design context discussed here. Check the applicable edition and project requirements before using them in design.
- 01Employer compensation: wages and benefits, not a BIM rate cardUS Bureau of Labor Statistics
- 02
