What is your opinion about outsourcing?

I consider ‘Outsourcing’ as having someone other than myself complete the work.

There is a threshold that you have to come to in order to consider outsourcing. That threshold is a combination of the impact of these factors: 1. The Billing Amount 2. The amount of profit the work is bringing in 3. Current constraints and demands of your time.

1. Billing Amount: if I assume a work week to be 40 hours, and there are 50 working weeks in a year, then I am left with 2,000 work hours. If an average job has a breakdown of the following: Architect of Record 1%, Project Architect 35%, Architectural Design 2%, Job Captain 12%, Drafting 40%, Clerical 10%, and assume the following prices for services: AR= $270, PA= $170, AD= $90, JC=$75, DFT=$60, CL=$45, then the max. amount you can expect to make gross is $426,156.91. If you anticipate billing more than this, then you should outsource.
2. Profit: After you have reached your profit, expense and savings goals for the year, you may then consider out sourcing.
3. Constraints on time: If the amount of time you will need to complete a project exceeds that which you have available, you should outsource

Outsourcing only begins to be profitable if it facilitates your reaching all of the above goals. It can also ‘eat up’ your profitability if it requires too much ‘hand holding’.