AI exposure: Paving, Surfacing, and Tamping Equipment Operators
Operate equipment used for applying concrete, asphalt, or other materials to road beds, parking lots, or airport runways and taxiways or for tamping gravel, dirt, or other materials. Includes concrete and asphalt paving machine operators, form tampers, tamping machine operators, and stone spreader operators.
Reading this score
computedPaving, Surfacing, and Tamping Equipment Operators is among the least exposed occupations measured, at 1.4% of weighted task load, rank 908 of 923. 96.0% of this job is work current AI systems cannot produce at all. That is not a statement about skill or value. It is a statement about what these systems can and cannot do.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 20 tasks it averages 2.92 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 Drive machines onto truck trailers, and drive trucks to transport machines and material to and..., at 8.3%. The least is Set up forms and lay out guidelines for curbs, according to written specifications, at 0.0%. A gap of 8.3% 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 construction and extraction occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 5.1% across the group's 61 roles, with 51 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 20 tasks, 0 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 20 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 | 0.14 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.92 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.79 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.86 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.01 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 1.18 | 0-3 |
Task by task
20 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drive machines onto truck trailers, and drive trucks to transport machines and material to and from job sites. | 8.3% | 16.7% | 75.0% | 3.91 | untouched |
| Coordinate truck dumping. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 3.92 | untouched |
| Inspect, clean, maintain, and repair equipment, using mechanics' hand tools, or report malfunctions to supervisors. | 5.2% | 3.1% | 91.7% | 3.87 | untouched |
| Observe distribution of paving material to adjust machine settings or material flow, and indicate low spots for workers to add material. | 2.9% | 9.6% | 87.5% | 3.98 | untouched |
| Start machine, engage clutch, and push and move levers to guide machine along forms or guidelines and to control the operation of machine attachments. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.16 | untouched |
| Fill tanks, hoppers, or machines with paving materials. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.03 | untouched |
| Control paving machines to push dump trucks and to maintain a constant flow of asphalt or other material into hoppers or screeds. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.01 | untouched |
| Set up and tear down equipment. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.87 | untouched |
| Operate machines to spread, smooth, level, or steel-reinforce stone, concrete, or asphalt on road beds. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.86 | untouched |
| Light burners or start heating units of machines, and regulate screed temperatures and asphalt flow rates. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.74 | untouched |
| Control traffic. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.61 | untouched |
| Shovel blacktop. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.55 | untouched |
| Operate tamping machines or manually roll surfaces to compact earth fills, foundation forms, and finished road materials, according to grade specifications. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.53 | untouched |
| Operate oil distributors, loaders, chip spreaders, dump trucks, and snow plows. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.48 | untouched |
| Place strips of material, such as cork, asphalt, or steel into joints, or place rolls of expansion-joint material on machines that automatically insert material. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.58 | untouched |
| Drive and operate curbing machines to extrude concrete or asphalt curbing. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.50 | untouched |
| Operate machines that clean or cut expansion joints in concrete or asphalt and that rout out cracks in pavement. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.42 | untouched |
| Cut or break up pavement and drive guardrail posts, using machines equipped with interchangeable hammers. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.38 | untouched |
| Install dies, cutters, and extensions to screeds onto machines, using hand tools. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.26 | untouched |
| Set up forms and lay out guidelines for curbs, according to written specifications, using string, spray paint, and concrete or water mixes. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.17 | 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.