AI exposure: Maintenance and Repair Workers, General
Perform work involving the skills of two or more maintenance or craft occupations to keep machines, mechanical equipment, or the structure of a building in repair. Duties may involve pipe fitting; HVAC maintenance; insulating; welding; machining; carpentry; repairing electrical or mechanical equipment; installing, aligning, and balancing new equipment; and repairing buildings, floors, or stairs.
Reading this score
computedAt 15.7% of weighted task load, Maintenance and Repair Workers, General sits at the 25th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 76.4% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 27 tasks it averages 2.43 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work has to happen in physical space. A language model cannot move matter. Until the robotics to do this work is both good enough and cheap enough to deploy widely, capability in software does not reach it.
The most exposed thing this job does is Order parts, supplies, or equipment from catalogs or suppliers, at 80.0%. The least is Position, attach, or blow insulating materials to prevent energy losses from buildings, pipes,..., at 0.0%. A gap of 80.0% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within installation, maintenance and repair occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 50 roles in the group is 12.8%, and only 16 of them score higher than this. Occupational families are not uniform, and the spread inside them is often wider than the gap between them.
What would move this score. Of 27 tasks, 6 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 21 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 0.83 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.43 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.25 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.78 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.07 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 1.20 | 0-3 |
Task by task
27 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Order parts, supplies, or equipment from catalogs or suppliers. | 80.0% | 20.0% | 0.0% | 3.83 | exposed |
| Record type and cost of maintenance or repair work. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 3.70 | exposed |
| Estimate costs to repair machinery, equipment, or building structures. | 50.0% | 25.0% | 25.0% | 3.70 | exposed |
| Design new equipment to aid in the repair or maintenance of machines, mechanical equipment, or building structures. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 3.78 | exposed |
| Diagnose mechanical problems and determine how to correct them, checking blueprints, repair manuals, or parts catalogs, as necessary. | 37.5% | 25.0% | 37.5% | 3.80 | exposed |
| Plan and lay out repair work, using diagrams, drawings, blueprints, maintenance manuals, or schematic diagrams. | 33.3% | 16.7% | 50.0% | 3.60 | exposed |
| Train or manage maintenance personnel or subcontractors. | 20.0% | 17.5% | 62.5% | 3.30 | untouched |
| Adjust functional parts of devices or control instruments, using hand tools, levels, plumb bobs, or straightedges. | 15.0% | 10.0% | 75.0% | 3.89 | untouched |
| Inspect, operate, or test machinery or equipment to diagnose machine malfunctions. | 12.5% | 12.5% | 75.0% | 4.05 | untouched |
| Perform routine maintenance, such as inspecting drives, motors, or belts, checking fluid levels, replacing filters, or doing other preventive maintenance actions. | 6.7% | 5.8% | 87.5% | 4.26 | untouched |
| Repair machines, equipment, or structures, using tools such as hammers, hoists, saws, drills, wrenches, or equipment such as precision measuring instruments or electrical or electronic testing devices. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.86 | untouched |
| Assemble, install, or repair wiring, electrical or electronic components, pipe systems, plumbing, machinery, or equipment. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.75 | untouched |
| Clean or lubricate shafts, bearings, gears, or other parts of machinery. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.73 | untouched |
| Align and balance new equipment after installation. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.70 | untouched |
| Maintain or repair specialized equipment or machinery located in cafeterias, laundries, hospitals, stores, offices, or factories. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.70 | untouched |
| Dismantle machines, equipment, or devices to access and remove defective parts, using hoists, cranes, hand tools, or power tools. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.68 | untouched |
| Install equipment to improve the energy or operational efficiency of residential or commercial buildings. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.54 | untouched |
| Set up and operate machine tools to repair or fabricate machine parts, jigs, fixtures, or tools. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.37 | untouched |
| Perform general cleaning of buildings or properties. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.36 | untouched |
| Fabricate or repair counters, benches, partitions, or other wooden structures, such as sheds or outbuildings. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.20 | untouched |
| Paint or repair roofs, windows, doors, floors, woodwork, plaster, drywall, or other parts of building structures. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.09 | untouched |
| Perform routine maintenance on boilers, such as replacing burners or hoses, installing replacement parts, or reinforcing structural weaknesses to ensure optimal boiler efficiency. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.82 | untouched |
| Provide groundskeeping services, such as landscaping or snow removal. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.71 | untouched |
| Operate cutting torches or welding equipment to cut or join metal parts. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.70 | untouched |
| Inspect used parts to determine changes in dimensional requirements, using rules, calipers, micrometers, or other measuring instruments. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.61 | untouched |
| Assemble boilers at installation sites, using tools such as levels, plumb bobs, hammers, torches, or other hand tools. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.45 | untouched |
| Position, attach, or blow insulating materials to prevent energy losses from buildings, pipes, or other structures or objects. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.04 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.