Assess compliance with environmental laws
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
Software can pull the data, run the comparison and write up what it found. The accuracy depends almost entirely on whether it is wired into the real system of record rather than a stale copy, which is the problem the tools and auth layer exists to solve.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Analysis and evaluation work |
| Jobs that do it | 10 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Builders, Tools and auth |
| O*NET activity | Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards (4.A.2.a.3) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 10 occupations that perform it.
- Check for, and ensure compliance with, environmental laws, and notify law enforcement when violations are identified.
- Initiate, schedule, or conduct annual audits or compliance checks of program implementation by local government.
- Monitor contract compliance and results of forestry activities to assure adherence to government regulations.
- Conduct environmental audits or inspections or investigations of violations.
- Inspect active remediation sites to ensure compliance with environmental or safety policies, standards, or regulations.
- Prepare hydrogeologic evaluations of known or suspected hazardous waste sites and land treatment and feedlot facilities.
- Monitor emission control devices to ensure they are operating properly and comply with state and federal regulations.
- Conduct interviews to obtain information or evidence regarding communicable diseases or violations of health or sanitation regulations.
- Review property details to ensure that environmental regulations are met.
- Operate machines to process materials in compliance with applicable safety, energy, or environmental regulations.
- Evaluate violations or problems discovered during inspections to determine appropriate regulatory actions or to provide advice on the development and prosecution of regulatory cases.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for analysis and evaluation work, and what it costs.
Start in the assistant with an export of the real data, because the accuracy problem here is a stale copy rather than a weak model. Make, at $9 a month, is the cheapest way to put the pull on a schedule once the analysis is worth repeating.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
10 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Conservation Scientists
- Environmental Restoration Planners
- Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health
- Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health
- Foresters
- Hydrologists
- Occupational Health and Safety Technicians
- Real Estate Brokers
- Separating, Filtering, Clarifying, Precipitating, and Still Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
- Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Assess compliance with environmental standards or regulations”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.