Overflow drafting and CAD production for licensed engineering firms that can't afford to slow down
Datum Consulting provides professional-grade civil drafting and CAD production support to small and mid-size engineering firms across British Columbia and Northern California — grading, storm sewer, sanitary, water, and subdivision drawings produced to your design intent and under your engineer's direction. No retainer. No long-term commitment. Just reliable production, on your timeline.
"Your Fixed Point for Civil Excellence" — Datum Consulting
Datum Consulting, Inc. is a civil drafting and CAD production studio — not a licensed or registered engineering firm. We prepare drawings, models, quantity take-offs, and documentation to your design criteria and markups. On every project, your appropriately licensed Professional Engineer remains the engineer of record, retains responsible charge of the engineering, makes all engineering decisions, and signs and seals all deliverables. We do not offer or practice professional engineering, and we do not provide engineering services to project owners or the public.
Code-aware drafting and CAD production across the disciplines that land development firms need most — produced to your standards and design criteria, on your timelines.
Site grading and earthwork drafting for residential, commercial, and subdivision developments — contour layouts, cut/fill quantity take-offs, and Civil 3D surface/corridor production to your design intent.
Storm drainage drafting, plan-and-profile production, catch-basin and pipe layout to your sizing, and C.3/SSQDM stormwater-quality documentation prepared to your engineer's design.
Sanitary sewer drafting — gravity and pressurized layouts, manhole scheduling, connection details, and plan-and-profile drawings produced to your design.
Watermain layout, hydrant and service-connection drafting, and utility coordination to local standards in Sacramento, Placer County, and Bay Area jurisdictions — produced to your design.
Full subdivision drafting packages including lot grading, road layout, utility corridors, and servicing plans produced to your design. Experienced with standard subdivision, PUD, and tentative-map drawing requirements across NorCal jurisdictions.
Hydrology model production (HydroCAD, HEC-RAS) to your inputs, SWPPP documentation, construction-staking data prep, topographic base production, and Civil 3D model QA. Tell us what you need.
Discuss your project →Most outsourcing firms treat California as a single jurisdiction. We know it's not. Our production team is fluent in the agency drafting and documentation requirements specific to Northern California's regions — before you have to explain them.
Grading, storm, sanitary, and water drafting to Sacramento County, City of Sacramento, Placer County, and El Dorado County standards. Familiar with SSQDM priority project lists and Regional San requirements.
Stormwater-quality documentation and exhibits for projects triggering Provision C.3 and C.6 under the Municipal Regional Permit. Familiar with BAHM hydrology, LID requirements, and Treatment Control BMPs for Bay Area jurisdictions.
Familiar with Lahontan RWQCB requirements, TRPA BMP standards, and high-mountain hydrology constraints that apply to projects in the Tahoe basin, Truckee, and adjacent mountain jurisdictions.
Our production team works in Autodesk Civil 3D for all grading, corridor, and utility drafting. Hydrology models are built in HydroCAD, HEC-HMS, HEC-RAS, and BAHM to your engineer's inputs and reviewed by your engineer of record.
Preparation of Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plans (SWPPP) for projects requiring CGP coverage. Familiar with discharger requirements, BMP selection, and documentation standards for NorCal construction sites.
Drafting and production support for land development projects across the broader Central Valley — familiar with San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Fresno County standards, and the active residential development pipeline expanding south from Sacramento.
"We built Datum Consulting to solve a problem we saw firsthand — great engineering firms stretched thin on production, unable to take on more work, losing capacity to firms that could scale faster."— Datum Consulting, Founders
Datum Consulting is a Northern California-focused civil drafting and CAD production studio providing overflow support to small and mid-size licensed engineering firms across Sacramento, Placer County, the Bay Area, and beyond. We work as a seamless extension of your team — on your timeline, to your standards — while your licensed engineer retains responsible charge and seals the work.
Every deliverable is reviewed against applicable local standards before delivery. We catch our own errors before you see the work.
Engage per project or on an ongoing basis. Scale up in a busy quarter, scale back when it's slow. No commitment required.
We understand that civil submittal deadlines are real. We commit to timelines and deliver on them — or we tell you early enough to adjust.
Project leads available during your working hours. No 12-hour lag, no timezone friction. We are reachable when it matters.
We are not the right partner for every firm. We are the right partner for firms facing these specific situations.
Your team is at capacity and a new project has landed. You need production support immediately, without the 6-week hiring process. We can start within days.
A submittal deadline is looming and you're two drafters short. Datum Consulting provides surge capacity that doesn't require onboarding, benefits, or long-term commitment.
You run a 5–20 person firm and have more work than in-house capacity. A trusted overflow partner lets you take on projects you'd otherwise have to turn away.
Your team is strong on design but thin on grading or storm sewer production. We fill the gap without you having to hire a specialist for a non-core function.
Your firm is expanding into Northern California and needs local regulatory knowledge embedded in your production work from day one. We bring that fluency.
Your firm is entering a new county or region — Placer, El Dorado, Solano, Contra Costa — and needs local jurisdiction knowledge embedded in your production work from the start.
Designed to fit into your existing workflow without adding administrative overhead.
Send us a redline set, a Civil 3D file, a tentative map, or a project description. We respond with a fixed-price quote and timeline — no hourly estimates, no surprises.
Your Datum project lead aligns with your team on CAD standards, sheet templates, point code conventions, jurisdiction requirements, and milestone dates — before production starts.
Our production team drafts to your standards. Our QA reviewers check deliverables against the local agency drafting checklist and attach a QA report to every submission. Engineering review, approval, and sealing remain with your engineer of record.
Files arrive on schedule with a QA log. Revisions within scope are tracked and managed — no clock-resetting on minor changes. Feedback is processed promptly.
A selection of the production work Datum Consulting delivers for licensed engineering firms across Northern California.
Lot grading drafting with contour layout, swale and drainage-slope production, and C.3 self-treating area delineation for a 32-lot subdivision in Placer County.
Storm sewer drafting package including SSQDM stormwater-quality exhibits, pipe schedules, hydraulic-grade-line production, and bioretention details for a Bay Area infill development.
Full servicing drawings — sanitary, storm, water, and road drafting — for a 40-unit standard subdivision in Sacramento County, coordinated with county plan-check requirements.
Whether you have overflow work, a tight deadline, or need a reliable long-term drafting partner — we'd like to hear about your project. We typically respond promptly.
Whether you have overflow work, an upcoming deadline, or want to discuss an ongoing drafting partnership — we'd love to hear from you. We respond promptly.