Communicate with others to coordinate vehicle movement
Part of the output can be produced by software today.
Software drafts well and sends at volume, and vertical support agents now resolve a large share of inbound questions end to end. What does not transfer is the relationship, and the judgment about when a message should not be sent at all.
| How automatable | Partly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Routine communication and explanation |
| Jobs that do it | 14 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Vertical agents, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates (4.A.4.a.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 14 occupations that perform it.
- Act as liaisons between ships' captains and shore personnel to ensure that schedules and budgets are maintained, and that ships are operated safely and efficiently.
- Guide the driver when the bus is moving in reverse gear.
- Contact control towers for takeoff clearances, arrival instructions, and other information, using radio equipment.
- Issue landing and take-off authorizations or instructions.
- Relay departure, arrival, delay, aircraft and airfield status, and other pertinent information to upline controlling agencies.
- Communicate with dispatchers by radio, telephone, or computer to exchange information and receive requests for passenger service.
- Confer with conductors or traffic control center personnel via radiophones to issue or receive information concerning stops, delays, or oncoming trains.
- Confer with conductors and other workers via radiotelephones or computers to exchange switching information.
- Confer with engineers regarding train routes, timetables, and cargoes, and to discuss alternative routes when there are rail defects or obstructions.
- Act as a liaison between a ship's captain and shore personnel to ensure that schedules and budgets are maintained and that the ship is operated safely and efficiently.
- Guide aircraft to designated areas using hand signals, batons, or other methods.
- Notify workers of any special treatment required for shipments.
- Monitor for trains at railroad crossings and signal the bus driver when it is safe to proceed.
- Confer with flight dispatchers and weather forecasters to keep abreast of flight conditions.
- Request changes in altitudes or routes as circumstances dictate.
- Maintain radio or telephone contact with adjacent control towers, terminal control units, or other area control centers to coordinate aircraft movement.
- Coordinate communications between air traffic control and maintenance personnel.
- Report arrival and departure times, train delays, work order completion, and time on duty.
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 routine communication and explanation, and what it costs.
Drafting replies costs nothing beyond the assistant you already pay for. Only move to a support agent billed per resolution once the inbound volume is large enough that the per-resolution price beats the hour it takes you.
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
14 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Air Traffic Controllers
- Aircraft Service Attendants
- Airfield Operations Specialists
- Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers
- Commercial Pilots
- Locomotive Engineers
- Marine Engineers and Naval Architects
- Rail Yard Engineers, Dinkey Operators, and Hostlers
- Railroad Conductors and Yardmasters
- School Bus Monitors
- Ship Engineers
- Shuttle Drivers and Chauffeurs
- Taxi Drivers
- Transportation Inspectors
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Communicate with others about operational plans or activities”. 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.