This experiment assessed the limitations of crowdsourcing as a method of completing difficult, complex tasks. The researchers aimed to find out how large groups of untrained crowd workers could be used to work on civil engineering tasks in order to expand the available workforce beyond just specialized engineers. This would increase overall productivity in the formal workplace by allowing certain tasks to be designated to crowd workers. As a result, crowd work could be utilized in specific situations in which there must be a large amount of time-sensitive work done, such as rebuilding infrastructure after a natural disaster.