EXPOSED
The core loop — monitor radio and sensors, log vessel passages, sequence gates and signals, open and close on a schedule — is exactly the kind of supervisory control that sensors, PLCs, and centralized remote operations centers already handle; the Panama Canal and multiple US state DOTs run bridges remotely today. What keeps the job alive is physical presence at the structure: clearing debris, greasing and hand-cranking balky machinery, spotting a barge that's drifting wrong, and being the person on site when the electronics fail. Coast Guard drawbridge regulations still mandate attended operation on many spans, but those rules are being waived for remote control one bridge at a time, so this shield is eroding by policy, not by technology.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. Sequencing gates, barriers, and signals to a published opening schedule and logging vessel names and times in a bridge log are already PLC-and-camera work on remotely operated spans in Florida, Michigan, and Illinois; the 8 rather than a 3 comes from the tasks that still need a body at the pier — chipping ice off a bascule leaf, clearing driftwood from a lock gate recess, hand-cranking to seat a bridge when the drive motor trips, and reading a tug captain's intent by eye when the radio is garbled.
Some physical or field component. You work in an operator's house with screens, radio, and control console for most of a shift, which caps this well below a lineman's score, but the 11 reflects the rest: walking the span to verify traffic gates dropped, greasing trunnion bearings and rack teeth, hauling debris out of miter gates, and doing it in the weather on a structure over moving water where wind, ice, and current don't wait for you.
Certification preferred, not legally required. There is no operator licence for this — most tenders are trained on the structure and qualified by the owning agency or DOT, and while 33 CFR Part 117 sets bridge opening duties and the Coast Guard can cite violations, the citation lands on the bridge owner, not on your personal credential, which is why this sits at 6 and not in licensed-professional territory.
Anonymous artifact production. Regular tug and barge crews on a river reach come to know your voice and how you handle a tight opening, and that familiarity is worth something on a bad-visibility night, but nobody chooses a route because of which tender is on shift — the service is the span opening on time, and a remote operator in a control center delivers the same product to the same captain.
Meaningful discretion. Most of the shift runs on written procedure — scheduled openings, signal sequences, radio protocols under Part 117 — but the 7 covers the calls that are genuinely yours: refusing or delaying an opening when a vehicle is stalled on the leaf, deciding whether an approaching barge has enough control to make the gap, and choosing to hold the bridge closed for an ambulance run against a waiting vessel.
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