Estimate technical or resource requirements for development or production 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 | 14 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Builders, Tools and auth |
| O*NET activity | Making Decisions and Solving Problems (4.A.2.b.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 14 occupations that perform it.
- Compute load and grade requirements, water flow rates, or material stress factors to determine design specifications.
- Perform detailed calculations to compute and establish manufacturing, construction, or installation standards or specifications.
- Determine project material or equipment needs.
- Identify operational requirements for new systems to inform selection of technological solutions.
- Estimate time or resource requirements for ergonomic or human factors research or development projects.
- Estimate costs, production times, or staffing requirements for new designs.
- Identify materials appropriate for mechatronic system designs.
- Determine quality, cost, strength, and quantity of required materials, and enter figures on materials lists.
- Prepare and interpret specifications, calculating weights, volumes, or stress factors.
- Identify required data, data acquisition plans, and test parameters, setting up equipment to conform to these specifications.
- Calculate dimensions, square footage, profile and component specifications, and material quantities, using calculator or computer.
- Calculate design specifications or cost, material, and resource estimates, and prepare project schedules and budgets.
- Calculate required capacities for equipment of proposed system to obtain specified performance and submit data to engineering personnel for approval.
- Estimate material, time, and staffing requirements for a given project, based on work orders, job specifications, and experience.
- Prepare specifications for purchases of materials or equipment.
- Calculate excavation tonnage and prepare graphs and fill-hauling diagrams for use in earth-moving operations.
- Research equipment or component needs, sources, competitive prices, delivery times, or ongoing operational costs.
- Calculate weights, volumes, and stress factors and their implications for technical aspects of designs.
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
14 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Aerospace Engineering and Operations Technologists and Technicians
- Architectural and Civil Drafters
- Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Civil Engineers
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Electrical and Electronics Drafters
- Electrical Engineers
- Electronics Engineers, Except Computer
- First-Line Supervisors of Helpers, Laborers, and Material Movers, Hand
- Human Factors Engineers and Ergonomists
- Manufacturing Engineers
- Mechanical Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Mechatronics Engineers
- Radio Frequency Identification Device Specialists
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Determine resource needs of projects or operations”. 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.