Cost Estimators

54% (Moderate Risk)

Moderate Risk (41-60%): Occupations with a moderate risk of automation usually involve routine tasks but still require some human judgment and interaction.

More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated is available here.

User poll

Sentiment

The following graph is included wherever there is a substantial amount of votes to render meaningful data. These visual representations display user poll results over time, providing a significant indication of sentiment trends.

Wages

High paid relative to other professions

In 2023, the median annual wage for 'Cost Estimators' was $74,740, or $35 per hour

'Cost Estimators' were paid 55.5% higher than the national median wage, which stood at $48,060

Wages over time

Comments

AR (Highly likely) 1 year ago

99% of my job is working in various programs (planswift, excel, bluebeam, etc) so it's just a matter of when they can automate those programs. High level humans will remain, as there will be too many unknowns to be accounted for.

1 1 Reply

Dozerking 12 months ago

Agreed. I use the same programs including Agtek for Earthwork which was once done by hand back in the early 90's before Paydirt and others like Agtek came along. These still need humans but I can see this being automated eventually. GPS in machines can automate to perform cuts and fills but there still needs to be a human in the cab, but who knows how long that will eventually go to a remote drone like system out in the field. Of course, safety would be the biggest hurdle here. I believe takeoff will be automated eventually in our lifetimes but as you said, there are too many unknowns in construction that it will be quite sometime in order to remove the human element. Project management is another one. I guess eventually when they have units like Data from Star Trek, then everything is on the table...

0 1 Reply

Mack (Low) 2 years ago

Estimations require human overview to determine cost v value, feasibility, weighing up real-time economic trends, personalised and unique designs from client etc.

Tasks such as drawing takeoff and generating schedules can be automated to a certain extent but still require human spot check and verification.

Admin tasks to set up and administer contracts can be automated.

1 1 Reply

Alhasan (Moderate) 3 years ago

This job is likely to become automated gradually, as it is becoming more dependent on software. It requires machine learning and automated market research.

1 1 Reply

Sam (Highly likely) 5 years ago

Too simple

0 1 Reply