Architecture and engineering virtual assistant: cost per sheet, per RFI and per permit round

On this page

1. Two roles, two price lines
2. The receipts: drafter, admin, VA
3. Where the licence line sits
4. Price per sheet, per RFI, per proposal
5. One permit resubmittal round, priced
6. Calculator: your licensed staff's drafting hours
7. By discipline: what the VA draws
8. Three firms, worked through
9. A drafting VA's week, priced by block
10. The project admin seat
11. Software seats and files
12. Numbers to track every Friday
13. The extras on both sides
14. How the agency example bills
15. Tests before you hire
16. The first month
17. AEC production terms, in one line each
18. How to hire one here
19. Questions about the cost

Two roles, two price lines

Architecture and engineering firms hand two very different kinds of work to a remote assistant. One is production: drawings, models, schedules and sheet sets. The other is the paper trail around a project: RFIs, submittals, permits, meeting notes, proposals and invoices. They need different skills, get tested differently and are priced differently. Before you read any total on this page, decide which one you're buying, or whether you need both.

Agency example rates: drafting and BIM roles at the Design & Creative Arts rate, project admin roles at the Administrative & Operations Support rate. Where a hire lands in each range depends on experience, the software and the discipline.

The split matters for cost as much as for skills. An admin VA booked to do drafting will be slow and will need heavy checking; a drafter booked to chase RFIs is paid $1.50–$4.00 an hour more than the work needs.

This page is about buildings and infrastructure: architects, MEP, structural and civil engineers, and the design side of AEC. Product and mechanical design (parts, assemblies, manufacturing drawings) is a different role with different software and tests. Contractor-side paperwork (pay applications, lien waivers, certificates of insurance) is covered on our construction VA cost page.

The receipts: drafter, admin, VA

US government pay data has a job title for each half of the role. The first slip prices a full-time drafter at the national median, the second a full-time administrative assistant, and both add what an employer pays on top of the wage. Then come the two agency lines for the same work done remotely.

Published by Outsourcing Insider, a VA MASTERS company. The agency slips use VA MASTERS' published architecture and engineering VA rates, shown because they're public; other agencies' prices vary. About us

1. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 median pay: drafters $68,090 a year ($32.74 an hour), architectural and civil drafters $66,150; secretaries and administrative assistants $48,310 ($23.23 an hour). Checked Nov 2026.
1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026, Table 6. Checked Oct 2026.
2. SHRM, 'SHRM Releases 2025 Benchmarking Reports' press release (Oct 15, 2025). Checked Oct 2026.
3. Agency example: VA MASTERS pricing page and its architecture and engineering VA page, checked Oct 2026.

Read the drafter slip as the fair price of an in-house production seat, not of your project architect's or engineer's time. In most small firms nobody is hired as a drafter: a licensed professional or a junior designer picks up redlines between design work, and that hour costs more than any line on these slips. The calculator further down uses your own number for it.

The slips leave out software, which costs the same whoever sits in the seat. Site visits and surveys stay local; work in a model, a PDF, a log or an inbox can move.

Where the licence line sits

This is the table to put in the VA's first-day guide. A drafting or admin VA prepares; a licensed architect or engineer decides, reviews, takes responsibility and seals. State licensing boards set the rules on sealing, on who may prepare documents under a professional's supervision and on how that supervision has to work. Those rules differ from state to state and country to country, so your state board decides what applies to your firm, not this page.

In practice: the seal and any digital signature certificate stay on the professional's own login, never shared with the VA, and on permit portals tied to a licence the VA prepares the upload and the professional presses submit.

Price per sheet, per RFI, per proposal

The VA's cost is the rate times the minutes, at the rate of the tier that does the task. The minutes below are example assumptions for a VA who already knows your standards and software; drafting minutes depend heavily on how clean your markups and templates are. Time the first month and replace them with yours.

The same 30-minute redline pickup done by the in-house drafter in the first slip, at the loaded $44.23 an hour, costs about $22.12. Done by a project architect at night, it costs whatever their hour is worth, plus the design work that didn't happen.

Watch the redline row. A sheet that comes back with a missed mark costs your reviewer a second look, so its real price is the drafting minutes plus your checking minutes. Count the sheets that come back for a second round, not just the hours billed.

One permit resubmittal round, priced

Plan-review comments come back, the clock starts, and the people who should be answering the technical comments end up plotting sheets. Here is one resubmittal round on an example project: 12 sheets with comments, split between the two tiers. Minutes are example assumptions.

At the in-house drafter's loaded rate the same 8.6 hours cost about $380. The bigger number is usually the calendar: when the redlines wait for a free evening, the round takes a week longer to go back. A VA working the comments the day they arrive is how the round gets shorter, not the hourly rate.

Every jurisdiction has its own forms, portal and review cycle. Give the VA one short sheet per city or county: where packages are uploaded, which forms are needed, how fees are paid (by you, from your account), and who on your team signs off. The VA keeps that sheet current as it learns.

Calculator: your licensed staff's drafting hours

For many firms the saving isn't a drafter's salary they never paid. It's the hours that architects, engineers and principals spend on production and paperwork instead of design, review and clients. Count one normal week honestly, split into drafting and admin, then put the numbers in:

Read the last line before you hire: over about 80 hours a month in one tier, a full-time seat starts to make sense; if both tiers come out large, that is two people.

By discipline: what the VA draws

The software overlaps across disciplines, so a CV that says "AutoCAD, Revit" tells you little. What separates an MEP drafter from an architectural one is knowing what the drawings are for. All of these sit in the drafting tier, $8.00–$14.00 an hour in the agency example.

Good first tasks: clash logs for MEP firms (your engineers decide each fix), survey base updates for civil firms. Test renderings separately: good renderings say nothing about construction document accuracy.

Three firms, worked through

Example firms with example volumes, priced with the agency example's two tiers:

Compare each total with the loaded drafter slip ($7,665 a month) and the admin slip ($5,438). The solo architect's mix costs less than either in-house seat and covers part of both. The MEP firm's mix buys a full drafting seat plus a half-time admin seat for less than one in-house drafter. None of the three removes the professional's review time: budget an hour or two a week per VA for markups, questions and checking, more in the first month.

A drafting VA's week, priced by block

Where 40 hours of a full-time drafting VA typically go at a small architecture or MEP firm, and what each block costs at $8.00–$14.00 an hour. Illustrative split; your project mix decides the real one.

Weekly total: $320–$560. In a quiet week the cleanup block grows; in a deadline week redlines take most of it.

Agree turnaround before the first day. Markups sent at the end of your day and picked up overnight are a real advantage of a remote seat, but only if they are clear enough to work without questions; agree how the VA asks and how fast you answer.

The project admin seat

The admin load in an AEC firm is mostly coordination: chasing RFIs, submittals, consultants and permit status. It's the work that fills a project lead's inbox and that nobody bills well. The project admin tier, $6.50–$10.00 an hour in the agency example, covers:

• RFI and submittal logs: numbered, dated and chased across all active projects, in your project platform or your own log. $1.08–$1.67 to log and route one RFI at the example 10 minutes.
• Document control: one current set per project, superseded sheets marked, transmittals with every issue, a drawing register that matches what was sent.
• Permit tracking: one sheet with every application, its status, the next action and the person responsible; correction notices logged and split up the day they arrive.
• Proposals and qualifications: RFP deadlines tracked, your project sheets and team CVs kept current, proposals laid out from the scope and fee your principal sets. At the example 90 minutes, $9.75–$15.00 per proposal.
• Invoicing: invoices against the fee schedule from the percent complete your project lead gives, receivables followed up politely and logged.

The admin VA doesn't answer an RFI's technical content, choose a consultant, agree a fee or promise a client a date. It drafts, routes, tracks and reminds.

Software seats and files

The hourly rate covers the person, not the software. CAD and BIM tools (AutoCAD, Revit, Civil 3D, Navisworks), rendering tools, PDF markup (Bluebeam Revu), cloud collaboration (Autodesk Construction Cloud, BIM 360), project platforms (Procore, Fieldwire), scheduling and accounting tools all bill you per plan or per named user, whoever does the work. The subscriptions belong to the firm, and the VA works in your seats under your account, the same as an employee would. Check your vendor's licence terms for use of a seat by a team member outside your office before you compare totals.

Keep the files on your side too. The VA opens your models and drawings in your cloud storage or through a remote desktop into your office machines, never on a personal copy of your templates. Give a named login with the permissions the role needs, two-factor login where offered, and no access to seals, signature certificates, bank accounts or payment approval. Our guide on giving a VA access to accounts walks through it. Remove access the day the role ends; the models, logs and sheets stay where they always were.

Test one technical risk during the trial: a large Revit model over the VA's connection. If syncing takes minutes, fix the setup (cloud worksharing, a remote desktop) before you blame the person.

Numbers to track every Friday

Both tiers are easy to measure because every item has a date and a check. Ask for these in a one-page weekly report. You set the targets; there are no honest industry benchmarks to copy.

Our VA KPI scorecard has a blank version to adapt.

The extras on both sides

How the agency example bills

• Billed monthly after the work, for hours worked only
• Nothing to pay before you choose your hire
• 30-day trial with each new hire: end it right away, no notice
• After the trial, 30 days' written notice
• Replacement at no extra cost
• A one-time advance payment once you choose your hire, credited against your first invoices and refundable
• Recruitment, placement or setup fee: None
• Bank transfer in USD: No processing fee
• Credit card or PayPal: 4% processing fee

Tests before you hire

Don't hire a drafting VA without a practical test in your software; an interview can't tell you whether someone keeps dimensions and layers right under time pressure. Run these on your shortlist.

Drafting test (45 minutes):

1. Redlines: a marked-up PDF of one real sheet from a finished project, with 12–15 marks. Implemented in your CAD or Revit template. Check every mark, then the dimensions, layers or view settings, tags and the revision cloud.
2. Discipline check: one mark that is ambiguous on purpose. The right response is a question, not a guess.
3. File habits: how they name and save the file, and whether they touch anything that wasn't marked.

Admin test (30 minutes):

1. Logs: a sample RFI log and three new items from a project lead's notes. Do they number them, set due dates and flag the one holding up the drawings?
2. Document control: a folder with two revisions of the same sheet and an old transmittal. Can they say which is current and what the next transmittal should list?
3. Writing: a follow-up to a consultant who is late with a response, and a short status note to a client whose permit came back with comments.

One question for both tiers: "The architect is away and the portal needs the package today; would you submit it?" The right answer is no: prepare, flag and wait. Our interview questions template has more.

The first month

The handover is the habit that makes this work: what your team decided today is what gets drawn tonight. Our onboarding checklist covers the rest.

AEC production terms, in one line each

Useful for the job description and for checking a candidate knows the work.

Redlines (markups)

Corrections and changes marked on a drawing, on paper or in a PDF, for the drafter to pick up.

Sheet set

The full list of sheets for an issue, with an index, title blocks and revision data.

Family

A reusable Revit component (a door, a fixture, a piece of equipment) with its own parameters.

Clash detection

Checking linked models for places where elements from different disciplines collide.

RFI (request for information)

A written question about the drawings or specs, tracked until answered.

Transmittal

A cover record listing exactly which documents and revisions were sent, to whom and when.

As-builts

Drawings updated to show what was actually built, from field markups.

Seal (stamp)

The licensed professional's mark of responsibility on a drawing; only they apply it.

How to hire an architecture or engineering VA here

Requests from this site go to our recruiting partner, the agency in the example above, at $8.00–$14.00 an hour for drafting and BIM roles and $6.50–$10.00 for project admin:

1. Tell us the work: discipline, software, the tier (drafting, admin or both), hours to cover and the tasks from this page.
2. Meet a shortlist: candidates with AEC drafting or project admin backgrounds, with a practical test for drafting roles, usually in about 2 business days.
3. Choose and start: nothing is paid before you choose; billing is monthly, after the work, for hours worked.

The trade-offs: an agency costs more per hour than hiring a freelance drafter yourself, in exchange for screening, payroll handling and free replacement. The first weeks need your time for standards, checking and the daily handover.

More: what a construction VA costs (the contractor's side of the same projects), job description templates, part-time vs full-time VA cost and outsourcing vs hiring in-house.