The first worry architects raise about offshore drafting is the time difference. In practice it is the part that most often turns into an advantage, provided the working pattern is set up deliberately rather than left to chance.
The basic rhythm
With a team in India supporting a US office, the working days barely overlap, which sounds unhelpful until you use it properly. You issue work at the end of your day. It is drafted while your office is closed. It is waiting when you arrive. Handled well, a review and revision cycle that takes two days inside one office takes one.
The trade is that you cannot lean over and ask a question. Everything depends on the quality of the handover.
What makes the cycle work
Send a complete package. A markup with three ambiguous notes will come back with three assumptions baked in. Ten minutes spent making the instruction unambiguous saves a full cycle.
Mark up precisely. Clouded areas with specific notes beat general comments. If something is unclear in your own head, say so and ask for a query rather than a solution.
Protect an overlap window. Even an hour or two of shared working time changes everything. Most offshore teams will shift hours to cover the start of the US day. Use it for anything genuinely conversational, and keep asynchronous handovers for routine production.
Expect a queries list, not silence. A good team sends questions at the start of their day so answers are waiting when they return. If you never receive queries, assumptions are being made.
What suits the overnight cycle
Production drafting, sheet setup, detail development, model updates from markups, quantity take offs and rendering all move well overnight. They are defined tasks with clear inputs.
What moves badly is anything requiring live judgement: early design exploration, negotiating a tricky code interpretation, or work where the brief is still forming. Do that in the overlap window or keep it in house.
Plan around genuine constraints
Holidays differ between countries, so agree a calendar rather than discovering it in a deadline week. Time zone gaps also stretch across weekends: work sent Friday evening in the US will typically start Monday, not Saturday. Neither is a problem when planned, both are irritating when assumed.
The practical test
If your handovers are clear enough that a competent drafter could act on them without speaking to you, the overnight cycle will work. If they depend on a conversation you have not had yet, no amount of overlap will fix it. The discipline it forces on briefing tends to improve the way an office documents its own intent.