Our Story
Most "Our Story" pages read like a resume with a smile drawn on. This one's supposed to be more honest than that. Here's how a bloke who once wrote down a 1 instead of a 2 ended up running a Brisbane drafting and 3D scanning business — and why that mistake mattered more than you'd think.
A Brisbane Drafting and 3D Scanning Business, Built the Hard Way
How It Started
Straight out of school, I landed in a factory — welding aluminum and steel, running the powder coat line, doing assembly, packing, metal treatment, whatever needed doing that day. At the same time I was studying business at uni, so my mornings were balance sheets and my afternoons were metal dust. Not exactly complementary, but it worked.
Then I did what a lot of people do at some point — went overseas for a while, came back with no real plan. I picked up work painting houses and building retaining walls and fences, learned to drive a dingo (badly, at first), and did a bit of minor excavation on the side. None of it screamed "future engineer," but digging holes and mixing paint teaches you more about how things actually get built than a classroom ever will.
Eventually I went back to study — engineering this time — and partway through picked up work experience at Norris Energy Crop Technology, drafting components for a second-generation sugar cane harvesting and cleaning machine. That was the first real taste of "this is actually what I want to do." From there I moved to Metfit Industries, where I cut my teeth drafting truck fit outs and truck components — toolboxes, skid plates, ratchets — plus bigger industrial jobs like a crane safety platform and a gas bottle refilling station. Machining drawings, laser cut, waterjet cut, brake press, weldments — if it could be drawn and made out of metal, I was drawing it.
From Metfit I moved into PFI, working my way through estimation, design, and project management. The whole time I kept doing contract drafting on the side for a bit of extra cash. Eventually the side hustle got busy enough that staying part-time stopped making sense, and Prometheus Engineering became the full-time gig.
A Bit of Everything
Anyone can knock together a frame out of RHS — that's drafting 101. Modelling proper sheet metal, the kind that actually has to fold, weld, and fit together in the real world, is a different skill entirely. Add in a stint painting houses, building retaining walls, and a business and engineering degree, and you end up with someone who understands a job from every angle — how it's drawn, how it's built, how it's installed, and how the business side of it actually runs. Turns out driving a dingo teaches you things a CAD course never will.
Why We Started Scanning Everything
Here's an honest admission: I've turned up to site, measured everything, and later realised I'd written down a 1 instead of a 2. Not often. But often enough that it cost real time — and more than a little pride — working out why a part didn't fit. Some sites don't make it easy either. Awkward access, height, gear in the way, where getting an accurate tape measurement is basically a small miracle.
That's the whole reason the Artec Ray II is part of the kit now. 1.9mm accuracy, captured once, no second-guessing a number scribbled on the back of a receipt. It's the tool I wish I'd had on day one, and now it means fewer mistakes and better outcomes on every job we run.
Capture · Detail · Build
Capture · Detail · Build started life as a neat way to sum the business up for a marketing brief. Turns out it's also genuinely the difference between a design that looks right and one that actually gets built without three change orders and a headache.
Capture means going and actually looking — not working off someone else's assumption of what's there. A scan gives you the real dimensions, the real angles, the real site conditions. No guessing, no "should be close enough."
Detail is where most of the value actually sits, and it's also where things go sideways if nobody's paying attention. Architects draw beautiful things — that's their job, and they're good at it. What they're generally not thinking about is how it gets made. I've lost count of drawings that call up countersunk bolts on a run of handrail like it's free — no thought for material thickness, tool access, or what that detail costs in labour once you multiply it across forty brackets. That's not a knock on architects; buildability just isn't the problem they're solving. It's the one I'm solving.
Build is where the design intent either survives contact with reality or doesn't. Every material choice, every joint, every fixing has a knock-on cost or time impact once it hits the workshop and then the site. My job across all three stages is holding onto what the design is actually trying to achieve, while quietly finding the trade-offs that make it manufacturable, installable, and — usually the part that matters most to whoever's paying for it — cost-effective, whether that's saving material or saving time.
That's the bit a lot of drafting services skip. Anyone can draw what they're told. Fewer people are looking at a drawing and asking whether it'll actually go together the way it's shown, and whether there's a smarter way to get the same result.
What Makes Us Different
We actually care how the job turns out — not in a framed-motivational-poster way, in an "I'll tell you if there's a better way to do this" way. If I spot a problem, you'll hear about it before it becomes an expensive one. If there's a smarter way to detail something, I'll say so, even if you didn't ask.
I also spend a lot of time listening to the trades who fabricate and install what we draft. They're the ones who'll tell you honestly if something's a pain to fit on site or took twice as long to weld. That feedback is worth more than anything I’ve found in a textbook.
Since 2019
Prometheus Engineering has been running since 2019, across hundreds of projects — architectural metalwork, screens, balustrades, louvres, handrails, disability access ramps, battens, stainless work, machining, and a fair bit of transport industry gear along the way. Basically: if it's metal, there's a good chance we can draft it, and probably help get it built too.
Beyond the Drafting Board
Outside of work, I play guitar in a band, and I've got a genuine (if slightly nerdy) passion for writing, recording, mixing, and producing music. Audio engineering is my guilty pleasure — a completely different kind of detail work, but it scratches exactly the same itch as getting a drawing dead right.
Want to know how we actually work, day to day or get in touch if you've got a job that needs capturing, detailing, or built properly.