Job Check
Cost Estimators
Prepare cost estimates for product manufacturing, construction projects, or services to aid management in bidding on or determining price of product or service. May specialize according to particular service performed or type of product manufactured.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Analyze blueprints and other documentation to prepare time, cost, materials, and labor estimates.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 02Confer with engineers, architects, owners, contractors, and subcontractors on changes and adjustments to cost estimates.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 03Collect historical cost data to estimate costs for current or future products.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 04Assess cost effectiveness of products, projects or services, tracking actual costs relative to bids as the project develops.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 05Consult with clients, vendors, personnel in other departments, or construction foremen to discuss and formulate estimates and resolve issues.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 06Establish and maintain tendering process, and conduct negotiations.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 07Prepare estimates for use in selecting vendors or subcontractors.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 08Prepare estimates used by management for purposes such as planning, organizing, and scheduling work.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 09Set up cost monitoring and reporting systems and procedures.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 10Review material and labor requirements to decide whether it is more cost-effective to produce or purchase components.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job lossToo little dataNot enough work use was seen to measure. This does not mean the job is safe from AI.Anthropic, 2026
50%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 81% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Above 40% of jobsin how much of this job’s physical work robots have been shown to do, from factories to homes (2026).Anthropic, 2026
Your human edge
AI touches every main task of this job in some way. Your edge is judgment: knowing when AI’s work is right, and checking it before it counts.