Operate grounds maintenance equipment
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 | 4 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | None |
| O*NET activity | Controlling Machines and Processes (4.A.3.a.3) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 4 occupations that perform it.
- Mow or trim lawns or shrubbery, using mowers or hand or power trimmers, and clear debris from grounds.
- Operate vehicles or powered equipment, such as mowers, tractors, twin-axle vehicles, snow blowers, chainsaws, electric clippers, sod cutters, or pruning saws.
- Start motors and engage machinery, such as sprayer agitators or pumps or portable spray equipment.
- Operate boom trucks, loaders, stump chippers, brush chippers, tractors, power saws, trucks, sprayers, and other equipment and tools.
- Mow or edge lawns, using power mowers or edgers.
- Connect hoses and nozzles selected according to terrain, distribution pattern requirements, types of infestations, and velocities.
- Cut away dead and excess branches from trees, or clear branches around power lines, using climbing equipment or buckets of extended truck booms, or chainsaws, hooks, handsaws, shears, and clippers.
- Use hand tools, such as shovels, rakes, pruning saws, saws, hedge or brush trimmers, or axes.
- Plant grass with seed spreaders, and operate straw blowers to cover seeded areas with mixtures of asphalt and straw.
- Hoist tools and equipment to tree trimmers, and lower branches with ropes or block and tackle.
- Prune or trim trees, shrubs, or hedges, using shears, pruners, or chain saws.
- Operate shredding and chipping equipment, and feed limbs and brush into the machines.
- Mix and spray or spread fertilizers, herbicides, or insecticides onto grass, shrubs, or trees, using hand or automatic sprayers or spreaders.
- Spray trees to treat diseased or unhealthy trees, including mixing chemicals and calibrating spray equipment.
- Provide proper upkeep of sidewalks, driveways, parking lots, fountains, planters, burial sites, or other grounds features.
- Split logs or wooden blocks into bolts, pickets, posts, or stakes, using hand tools such as ax wedges, sledgehammers, and mallets.
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
4 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 “Operate agricultural or forestry equipment”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Operate farming equipment | 5 |
| Operate forestry equipment | 3 |
| Operate irrigation systems | 2 |
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.