There are certain drafters (draftsmen) who specialize in specific fields of drafting. There are some who actually subcontract to designers and architects to complete special plans like electrical, plumbing, HVAC (Heating and Air Conditioning), site plans, structural detailing, cabinets, special detailing and sectional drawings, etc., Most times these are drafters who are already trained in architecture, but some who trained just for their particular field of expertise. When I worked in a surveyors office as a young man, I remember many times that some of the local architects hired me to draw their site plans. This is really economical to the designer or architect because they can focus on the design of the house or commercial building and let the nitty gritty work be completed by someone else.
Some years back, I owned a drafting service where we created quite a few house plans, mechanical and machine drawings, and hired ourselves out to a few of the local surveyors. During that time, we often had several residential architectural home plans in office that needed completing. I already had two other drafters working for me to complete things like working from my sketches to create the floor plan drawings, exterior elevations, dimensioning and detailing. But things like electrical plans took a while to complete and slowed down the plan process.
To cure this, I was lucky enough to find a young man who had worked for an electrician who, thankfully, was looking for another job because of his health. I’m not thankful that his health was failing but was very thankful for his qualifications, I hired him and spent several weeks training him to use a CAD program and then focused his training on electrical drawings. He already understood household and commercial electrical and was invaluable to us because he even knew some things we never considered about the trade.
Before we knew it, he had sped up our progress in the office by an easy sixty to seventy percent. A year or so later however, he left us to work for an architect in one of the larger cities. I didn’t blame him because the job paid a lot more than I could… The good part of this was however, from what I had learned training him, I was prepared to train someone else because of the system we developed.
I hired a lady who knew absolutely nothing about electrical although she had completed some technical schooling in drafting at the local vocational school. On a foot note, there were a couple of things we need to un-train her from that the vocational course had taught her. Most vocational teachers, at least around here never actually practiced drafting professionally, but were athletic coaches who had to have some other subject to teach in order to hold a job at the schools. No, I’m not against high school or vocational school drafting programs but I am a firm believer in on the job training.
From the information gained from training my first electrical drafter, we already had in place a working system for the CAD program. She was drawing complete electrical plans after the second week and was totally proficient at it within a month of working with us. That was a couple of decades ago and I understand she is still drawing plans for a living.