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: json { "projectId": "unique-id", "metadata": { "city": "San Francisco", "region": "CA", "buildType": "Single Family" }, "costItems": [...] } ## Output Enhanced data with market benchmarks: json { "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