SAFE
The work is diagnosing and fixing overhead, automatic, and revolving doors in situ — replacing torsion springs, aligning tracks, adjusting sensors and closers, rewiring operators, and cutting and hanging hardware in buildings that are never built the same way twice. None of that is text or screen work, and today's robotics cannot get a 200-pound sectional door off a bent track in a cramped commercial vestibule. AI compresses the paperwork around the job — quoting, scheduling, parts lookup, service write-ups — not the job itself.
Tasks largely resist digitisation. Winding a torsion spring to the right turns on a door whose original hardware nobody documented, then shimming a jamb that settled three inches out of plumb, is trial-and-adjust physical judgment with no digitizable intermediate — the only tasks a model touches are the parts lookup and the invoice, which is why this lands at 17 and not a full 20.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments. Ladders, cramped vestibules, live 120V operators, overhead loads under lethal spring tension, freezing loading docks and active traffic doorways in occupied buildings — 19 reflects that every billable minute happens at the door itself, in a space configured by someone else decades ago.
Certification preferred, not legally required. There is no door-technician licence in most states; you may hold an electrical or low-voltage card, IDA/AAADM certification for automatic pedestrian doors, and you sign the annual AAADM inspection label — real paperwork, but the building owner and GC carry the exposure, which caps this at 7 rather than the 12+ an electrician's licence would earn.
Some relationship component. Property managers and facility directors call the tech who already knows which of their forty dock doors has the bad photo-eye and who will come at 6am before the store opens — the repeat service contract is sticky, but the door still gets fixed if a different van shows up, so 12 not 16.
Meaningful discretion. Deciding whether a fire-rated rolling door needs a drop test or full replacement, whether a cracked cable and worn drum means shut the bay down now, and calling a sensor a life-safety failure on a door thousands of people walk through daily is genuine discretion — but ANSI/DASMA and AAADM procedures and manufacturer specs frame most of those calls, holding this at 12.
Has AI actually changed your work?