Inspect equipment to ensure safety or proper functioning
Little of this can be handed to software today.
This happens in the physical world, so software agents do not touch it. Automation here means robotics and machinery, which is a different market from the one mapped on this site, on a much slower clock.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Physical, manual and inspection work |
| Jobs that do it | 12 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | None |
| O*NET activity | Inspecting Equipment, Structures, or Materials (4.A.1.b.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 12 occupations that perform it.
- Inspect facilities, machinery, or safety equipment to identify and correct potential hazards, and to ensure safety regulation compliance.
- Assess safety of wiring or equipment set-up to determine the risk of fire or electrical shock.
- Inspect facilities, supplies, vehicles, and equipment to ensure conformance to standards.
- Maintain fire suppression equipment in good condition, checking equipment periodically to ensure that it is ready for use.
- Inspect and adjust security equipment to ensure it is operational or to detect evidence of tampering.
- Inspect buildings for fire hazards and compliance with fire prevention ordinances, testing and checking smoke alarms and fire suppression equipment as necessary.
- Conduct inspections and acceptance testing of newly installed fire protection systems.
- Examine and inventory firefighting equipment, such as axes, fire hoses, shovels, pumps, buckets, and fire extinguishers, to determine amount and condition.
- Inspect conditions of locks, window bars, grills, doors, and gates at correctional facilities to ensure security and help prevent escapes.
- Inspect and adjust security systems, equipment, or machinery to ensure operational use and to detect evidence of tampering.
- Inspect recreational equipment, such as rope tows, T-bars, J-bars, or chair lifts, for safety hazards and damage or wear.
- Inspect buildings, equipment, or access points to determine security risks.
- Inspect stations, uniforms, equipment, or recreation areas to ensure compliance with safety standards, taking corrective action as necessary.
- Inspect and test fire protection or fire detection systems to verify that such systems are installed in accordance with appropriate laws, codes, ordinances, regulations, and standards.
- Verify proper functioning of physical security systems, such as closed-circuit televisions, alarms, sensor tag systems, or locks.
- Inspect and test new and existing fire protection systems, fire detection systems, and fire safety equipment to ensure that they are operating properly.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Nothing on this site applies. Automation here is robotics and machinery, a different market on a much slower clock, and no software subscription moves it.
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.
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
12 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Correctional Officers and Jailers
- Fire Inspectors and Investigators
- Firefighters
- First-Line Supervisors of Firefighting and Prevention Workers
- First-Line Supervisors of Police and Detectives
- First-Line Supervisors of Security Workers
- Forest Fire Inspectors and Prevention Specialists
- Health and Safety Engineers, Except Mining Safety Engineers and Inspectors
- Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers
- Lighting Technicians
- Retail Loss Prevention Specialists
- Security Guards
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Inspect commercial, industrial, or production systems or equipment”. 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.