Move levers and turn valves to activate power hammers, or to raise and lower drophammers that drive piles to required depths.

“Move levers and turn valves to activate power hammers, or to raise and lower drophammers that drive piles to required depths.” is a core task performed by Pile Driver Operators. Among the occupation's 5 rated tasks, workers place it 4th by importance (#2 most important). About 97% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Operate construction or excavation equipment. in Controlling Machines and Processes

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E0. No direct exposure — current language models give little or no time savings on this task.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.00. Automation potential label: T0.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Move hand and foot levers of hoisting equipment to position piling leads, hoist piling into leads, and position hammers over pilings. · importance 4.7
• Drive pilings to provide support for buildings or other structures, using heavy equipment with a pile driver head. · importance 4.5
• Conduct pre-operational checks on equipment to ensure proper functioning. · importance 4.5
• Clean, lubricate, and refill equipment. · importance 4.3

See all tasks on the Pile Driver Operators page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-14904,
  title  = {Move levers and turn valves to activate power hammers, or to raise and lower drophammers that drive piles to required depths.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-14904}
}