Operate heavy-duty construction or installation 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 | 7 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 7 occupations that perform it.
- Cut or break up pavement and drive guardrail posts, using machines equipped with interchangeable hammers.
- Drive pilings to provide support for buildings or other structures, using heavy equipment with a pile driver head.
- Adjust handwheels and depress pedals to control attachments, such as blades, buckets, scrapers, or swing booms.
- Operate heavy equipment, such as backhoes.
- Adjust controls of machines that spread, shape, raise, level, or align track, according to specifications.
- Start machines to feed revolving cables or rods into openings, stopping machines and changing knives to conform to pipe sizes.
- Operate heavy equipment, such as bulldozers and front-end loaders.
- Move levers and turn valves to activate power hammers, or to raise and lower drophammers that drive piles to required depths.
- Operate track wrenches to tighten or loosen bolts at joints that hold ends of rails together.
- Operate single- or multiple-head spike driving machines to drive spikes into ties and secure rails.
- Operate single- or multiple-head spike pullers to pull old spikes from ties.
- Engage mechanisms that lay tracks or rails to specified gauges.
- Drive vehicles that automatically move and lay tracks or rails over sections of track to be constructed, repaired, or maintained.
- Turn wheels of machines, using lever controls, to adjust guidelines for track alignments or grades, following specifications.
- Push controls to close grasping devices on track or rail sections so that they can be raised or moved.
- String and attach wire-guidelines machine to rails so that tracks or rails can be aligned or leveled.
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 “Operate construction or excavation 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.