Maintain equipment or systems to ensure 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 | 8 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | None |
| O*NET activity | Repairing and Maintaining Electronic Equipment (4.A.3.b.5) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 8 occupations that perform it.
- Design civil works associated with hydrographic activities and supervise their construction, installation, and maintenance.
- Implement and maintain configuration control systems.
- Maintain equipment used in a particular sport.
- Check and maintain equipment to ensure that it is in working order.
- Make adjustments or minor repairs to heating, cooling, ventilating, plumbing, or electrical systems.
- Replace light bulbs.
- Maintain or repair tools, equipment, or structures, such as buildings, greenhouses, fences, or benches, using hand or power tools.
- Clean or service machinery to ensure operating efficiency, using water, gasoline, lubricants, or hand tools.
- Maintain irrigation systems, including winterizing the systems and starting them up in spring.
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
8 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Athletes and Sports Competitors
- First-Line Supervisors of Housekeeping and Janitorial Workers
- Hydrologists
- Janitors and Cleaners, Except Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners
- Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers
- Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners
- Pesticide Handlers, Sprayers, and Applicators, Vegetation
- Special Effects Artists and Animators
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Maintain tools 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.