Analyze costs and benefits of proposed designs or projects
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
Software can pull the data, run the comparison and write up what it found. The accuracy depends almost entirely on whether it is wired into the real system of record rather than a stale copy, which is the problem the tools and auth layer exists to solve.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Analysis and evaluation work |
| Jobs that do it | 15 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Builders, Tools and auth |
| O*NET activity | Analyzing Data or Information (4.A.2.a.4) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 15 occupations that perform it.
- Assist in the assessment, acquisition, or deployment of new electronic document management systems.
- Calculate potential energy savings by comparing estimated energy consumption of proposed design to baseline standards.
- Conduct cost-benefit analyses for the construction of water supply systems, runoff collection networks, water and wastewater treatment plants, or wastewater collection systems.
- Analyze the financial impacts of sustainable manufacturing processes or sustainable product manufacturing.
- Calculate the efficiency or power output of a fuel cell system or process.
- Assess costs and estimate the production capabilities and economic value of oil and gas wells, to evaluate the economic viability of potential drilling sites.
- Perform thermal, stress, or cost reduction analyses for solar systems.
- Calculate excavation tonnage and prepare graphs and fill-hauling diagrams for use in earth-moving operations.
- Conduct statistical studies to analyze or compare production costs for sustainable or nonsustainable designs.
- Conduct statistical studies to analyze or compare production costs for sustainable and nonsustainable designs.
- Analyze, estimate, or report production costs.
- Evaluate transportation project needs or costs.
- Estimate the costs and benefits of municipal projects, such as hydroelectric power plants, irrigation systems, and wastewater treatment facilities.
- Evaluate subcontractors or subcontractor bids for quality, cost, and reliability.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for analysis and evaluation work, and what it costs.
Start in the assistant with an export of the real data, because the accuracy problem here is a stale copy rather than a weak model. Make, at $9 a month, is the cheapest way to put the pull on a schedule once the analysis is worth repeating.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
15 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Architects, Except Landscape and Naval
- Architectural and Civil Drafters
- Document Management Specialists
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Electro-Mechanical and Mechatronics Technologists and Technicians
- Fuel Cell Engineers
- Hydrologic Technicians
- Industrial Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Manufacturing Engineers
- Mechanical Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Petroleum Engineers
- Solar Energy Installation Managers
- Solar Energy Systems Engineers
- Transportation Planners
- Water/Wastewater Engineers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Evaluate designs, specifications, or other technical data”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.