Benchmark Aggregator Actor

Overview

The Benchmark Aggregator is the second actor in the BuildBench AI pipeline. It collects real-time market pricing data from multiple construction cost platforms and compares it against the normalized project data.

What It Does

• Scrapes market data from leading construction cost platforms:
  • HomeAdvisor - Construction cost guides
  • Angi - Labor and material pricing
  • Thumbtack - Service provider rates
  • BuildZoom - Regional benchmarks
• Aggregates pricing by construction category and region
• Calculates variance between project costs and market averages
• Identifies outliers - costs significantly above or below market rates
• Generates benchmarks for each cost item in the project

Input

Receives normalized project data from the Project Normalizer actor:

{
  "projectId": "unique-id",
  "metadata": {
    "city": "San Francisco",
    "region": "CA",
    "buildType": "Single Family"
  },
  "costItems": [...]
}

Output

Enhanced data with market benchmarks:

{
  "projectId": "unique-id",
  "projectData": {...},
  "benchmarks": [
    {
      "category": "Framing - Walls",
      "projectCost": 45000,
      "marketAverage": 38000,
      "marketRange": {
        "low": 32000,
        "high": 44000
      },
      "variance": "+18.4%",
      "sources": [
        "HomeAdvisor",
        "Angi"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "summary": {
    "totalBenchmarks": 45,
    "itemsAboveMarket": 12,
    "itemsBelowMarket": 8,
    "itemsInRange": 25
  }
}

Data Sources

• HomeAdvisor - https://www.homeadvisor.com/cost/
• Angi - https://www.angi.com/
• Thumbtack - https://www.thumbtack.com/
• BuildZoom - https://www.buildzoom.com/

Configuration

Environment variables:

• APIFY_TOKEN - Your Apify API token
• ENABLE_SCRAPING - Set to "true" for live scraping (default: demo mode)
• CACHE_DURATION - How long to cache market data (default: 24 hours)

Features

• Multi-source verification - Cross-references data from multiple platforms
• Regional adjustments - Accounts for geographic cost variations
• Historical trends - Compares against past pricing data
• Confidence scoring - Rates reliability of each benchmark

Demo Mode

When ENABLE_SCRAPING=false, uses realistic demo data for testing without hitting external APIs.

Next Step

Output is passed to the BuildBench Advisor actor for AI-powered recommendations.

Built With

• Node.js
• Apify SDK
• Cheerio (web scraping)
• Statistical analysis libraries

Author

BuildBench AI Team - Apify Hackathon 2025