I have expressed the idea on the researching alternative solutions to Tyler's ailment and as I am not specialist I'd like to hear someone give a estimate how much effort and research time it would take to even estimate feasibility of the idea?

I've been thinking what different skills within STSC and here is idea what different skill-levels might mean.

I assume that TAU and powerlines are pretty much as good as they can get with AINNs being easy to use and very intelligent. Problems arising mostly from them not working due major failures in infrastructure.

Power Engineering
no-skill:
Connect almost any machinery to any available TAU energy source. Any necessary adaptations will be done by AINN unit in charge of the operation. Replace safely non-functioning power line with equivalent one. Advanced safety measures keep things nice and simple even for operations that in bygone days might have needed very advanced specialist or jury-rigging. Non-safe failures are almost non-existent unless caused by massive system failure.  Stuff just works.

Level 1
Connect non-standard equipment that isn't made by the Tower into power lines. AINN can detect and guess proper settings in almost real time and thus requires almost no direction, but sometimes there is need to understand theory behind failure modes that might cause trouble later. Guess a approximate lifetime of non-standard powerline connection - too much voltage, etc. Understand what kind of situations might warrant a more skilled power engineer to over see dangerous failure modes and how to detect such situations.
Change settings and communicate with AINN nodes to optimize power lines and connections.
Figure out with a help of local AINNs what kind of priorities different pieces of equipment need.

Level 3
Safely study non-standard equipment and analyze problems related to them - someone  has jury-rigged local power lines with a strange looking cable that apparently does nothing at all and with this skill you can figure out if it is really useless piece of equipment or safe guard against bizarre AINN failure mode.
Design and create a standard non-standard piece of power engineering - like jury-rigging cables for different priorisation without consulting AINNs that might have very good, but inconvinient reasons to prefer other priorities.

Level 5
Design and create non-standard piece of equipment that communicates enough information to AINN network to work well enough in general - it might have small bugs in say... priority for energy in case of a general failure, etc but will work very well even in normal tower conditions.

10 level
Understand why AINN is very, very often correct in its prioritization  and how TAU really does understand problems related to power engineering very well. Create a protocol for class of equipment that meshes with TAU network smoothly and correctly and has safe failure modes. Design power engineering solutions that are non-standard and have safe failure modes even in large scale emergencies.

Structural Engineering
no-skill:
Use safety lines, signs and guides to lead a generally safe life even in the Tower that is collapsing around you.  Listen to TAU suggestions about good uses for spaces around you. Use ready made doors and walls to create rooms, etc from empty spaces. Use equipment that has AINN node to create more spaces and add that space to general database within TAU so that it can advice you.
Level 1
Use non-standard piece of equipment in relatively safe way. Estimate safety of structure from simulations with standard equipment with AINN.

Hardware Engineering
no skill
Use any piece of TAU created equipment and interface such equipment with other TAU created equipment. Everything runs smoothly and has intuitive interface and communicates how it is supposed to be used through necklink, AINN nodes guesses what stoopid hoomans want to do and makes using and learning easier by modifying interface in real time to make interface more intuitive.
Guess what non-standard equipment is supposed to do with help from the TAU.
Level 1
Communicate desire to use hardware in a way that it is not supposed to be used.
Communicate a non-standard equipment API to AINN.
Read AINN generated diagnosis of system failure.
Use non-standard equipment.
Guess what non-standard equipment is supposed to do even without help from TAU.

Level 3
Create a piece of non-standard equipment that has a simple protocol that you can communicate to AINNs.
Publish non-standard equipment protocol for the TAU to use in future.
Understand problems associated with non-standard pieces of equipment and fix simple problems even from equipment you haven't created yourself.

Software Engineering
no skill:
Using AINNs, necklinks, TAU, etc for most purposes. Search and analyse data in TAU network with standard programs avaivable to all. Oversee data analysis done by intelligent software from the Tower. Script programs together in a very fast way as programs interface intelligently guessing what user wants - it is also possible to give a example of how target material is supposed to look like and TAU guesses how you programs are supposed to mesh. Understand most interfaces intuitively as intelligent programs adapt themselves to your natural interface.
You can create automatic schedules, etc given enough time and it is normal part of your work routine. Relatively intelligent programs can be used to alert you for AINN reported failure modes - they automatically use priorities to not to bother you during wrong times. Programs generally figure out who to alert based on user given priorities, his associates and TAU database of skilled inviduals.

Level 1
You can create your own programs and use ready made simulations and search routines to give them relatively good intelligence (from our 21st century perspective that is). Understand time and space complexity of programs and be able to use limited capability of the TAU to fake Turing oracles for programming purposes - TAU has a huge collection of programs that are ready for use and analyzed thoroughly and it can give a fair guess of if program is question halts within specified time-frame.
Know about different classes of programs within the TAU database and have a passing familiarity (with a help from the TAU) to almost all programs TAU knows about.
Access to the TAU and computation time makes programming easy. New problems without good simulations and massive amount of analysis are harder.

Level 3
Create a adaptive interface to your program so that it is easier to use for other people.
Design a non-standard complex program.
Design a real time data analysis program that adapts itself to new situations using TAU databse - actual programming will need time from mainframes as most of the heavy lifting is done by TAU, but program will pre-adapt itself to different likely enviroments and will learn from the actual enviroment to optimize itself even futher.

Level 5
Lead a group of Software specialist with access to computation time to solve complex and dreary problem that would have taken in 21st century about thousand work years from skilled programmers working in a efficient team. 
Solve simpler problems without very good access to TAU or computation time.
Use a non-standard software that doesn't have a adaptive interface.
Communicate interfaces and how they are supposed to be used to the TAU.

Level 10
Design a new kind of adaptive interface to programs.
Use advanced heuristics to create a semblance of intelligence without an access to massive amount of computation time.
Direct the TAU to analyze a completely a new kind of problem and create a simulation of it that is fast and highly relevant.