Operate road-surfacing 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 | 3 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 3 occupations that perform it.
- Start machine, engage clutch, and push and move levers to guide machine along forms or guidelines and to control the operation of machine attachments.
- Operate road watering, oiling, or rolling equipment, or street sealing equipment, such as chip spreaders.
- Apply oil to road surfaces, using sprayers.
- Operate machines to spread, smooth, level, or steel-reinforce stone, concrete, or asphalt on road beds.
- Operate oil distributors, loaders, chip spreaders, dump trucks, and snow plows.
- Light burners or start heating units of machines, and regulate screed temperatures and asphalt flow rates.
- Control paving machines to push dump trucks and to maintain a constant flow of asphalt or other material into hoppers or screeds.
- Drive and operate curbing machines to extrude concrete or asphalt curbing.
- Operate machines that clean or cut expansion joints in concrete or asphalt and that rout out cracks in pavement.
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
3 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.