Inspect industrial or commercial equipment to ensure proper operation
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 | 7 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 7 occupations that perform it.
- Examine boilers, pressure vessels, tanks, or vats to locate defects, such as leaks, weak spots, or defective sections, so that they can be repaired.
- Test operation or functionality of mechanical, plumbing, electrical, and control systems.
- Perform building commissioning activities by completing mechanical inspections of a building's water, lighting, or heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.
- Examine lifting or conveying devices, such as elevators, escalators, moving sidewalks, hoists, inclined railways, ski lifts, or amusement rides to ensure safety and proper functioning.
- Test newly installed equipment to ensure that it meets specifications, such as stopping at floors for set amounts of time.
- Inspect, clean, and repair drainage systems, bridges, tunnels, and other structures.
- Test and diagnose air flow systems, using furnace efficiency analysis equipment.
- Inspect assembled vessels or individual components, such as tubes, fittings, valves, controls, or auxiliary mechanisms, to locate any defects.
- Locate malfunctions in brakes, motors, switches, and signal and control systems, using test equipment.
- Operate elevators to determine power demands, and test power consumption to detect overload factors.
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
7 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
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.