Skill Registry

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Layout Worker, Metal and Plastic — deciding whether to measure a feature directly from the established datum versus chaining from a previously marked feature, applying machining stock allowance to a layout dimension, selecting a datum that matches a part's functional reference, or diagnosing why a layout error compounded across multiple marked features.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Cleaning, Washing, and Metal Pickling Equipment Operator/Tender — deciding whether a delayed post-pickling bake for hydrogen embrittlement-susceptible material requires disposition beyond just completing the bake, verifying acid bath concentration rather than assuming it matches original makeup, confirming rinse effectiveness beyond visual appearance, or evaluating whether extended pickling time risks base metal attack.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Metal-Refining Furnace Operator — calculating an alloy addition that accounts for element-specific recovery rate rather than assuming 1:1 addition-to-result, recalculating additions from the current heat's actual assay rather than reusing a prior heat's amounts, adjusting slag basicity for the specific refining reaction required, or verifying actual tap temperature against the target rather than time-in-furnace.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a utility meter reader — investigating a consumption anomaly against a seasonal baseline, deciding whether a low or zero read is a tamper indicator versus a benign explanation, reconciling accumulated estimated reads against a new actual read, or recognizing a field safety hazard before proceeding with a read.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Human Factors Engineer/Ergonomist — computing a NIOSH Lifting Index for a manual-material-handling task, scoring a workstation posture with RULA or REBA, sizing a workstation, reach, or clearance dimension against ANSI/HFES 100 anthropometric percentiles, evaluating an interface's speed-accuracy tradeoff with Fitts's Law, or running a usability test and interpreting a System Usability Scale score against a task-error rate. Distinct from a health-safety-engineer (owns mechanical/chemical/energy hazard elimination) and a commercial-industrial-designer (owns product form and manufacturability) — this role owns the fit between human capability (physical and cognitive) and a task, tool, or interface.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Human Services Assistant — screening a client's eligibility for public benefits or emergency assistance, triaging a walk-in request against a broader unmet-needs picture, deciding whether a disclosure or no-show pattern requires escalation to a supervising social worker, running a coordinated-entry or VI-SPDAT-style intake, or facilitating a psychoeducation/support group under agency ground rules.

Use when a task needs senior HVAC-technician judgment — verifying refrigerant charge against a manufacturer target, sizing or right-sizing equipment against a Manual J load, diagnosing a short-cycling or poor-dehumidification complaint, reading static pressure and airflow to separate a duct problem from a charge problem, or handling refrigerant under EPA Section 608 requirements.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Hydroelectric Production Manager — running a hydroelectric power facility, managing water resource allocation and reservoir levels, evaluating dam safety and equipment maintenance decisions, or balancing generation output against competing water uses (irrigation, flood control, ecological flow).

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Microbiologist — identifying an organism from a culture (biochemical panel, MALDI-TOF, or 16S rRNA sequencing), investigating a contamination source in a sterile or food-production environment, interpreting antimicrobial susceptibility testing against CLSI breakpoints, back-calculating a contamination timeline from growth kinetics, or judging whether an environmental-monitoring excursion is a genuine control-failure signal.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Hydrologic Technician — taking and computing a streamflow (discharge) measurement, deciding whether a rating curve needs a shift, siting or servicing a stream gage, running field water-quality calibration and sampling, or triaging a suspect record before it's published.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a hydrologist — running a flood-frequency analysis to set a design discharge, building a watershed water balance, modeling groundwater flow or drawdown from a pumping test, evaluating a water-rights allocation question, or reviewing a stormwater/streamflow dataset for a permit or engineering design input.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Microsystems Engineer — sizing a MEMS actuator's usable travel against electrostatic pull-in, checking a layout against a foundry's DRIE aspect-ratio and process-layer capability, writing a failure/reliability analysis for a stiction or hinge-creep complaint, specifying a hermeticity or shock/thermal-cycling qualification plan, or deciding between an MPW shuttle run and a dedicated prototype lot.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Middle School Career/Technical Education Teacher — running day-one equipment safety certification for a new rotation cohort, backward-designing a compressed 6-9 week exploratory unit around one deliverable, separating career-interest signal data from skill-mastery grades, matching a CTSO (TSA/FCCLA) competitive event to what a cohort actually practiced, or telling a parent or counselor accurately what a completed rotation does and doesn't count toward under Perkins V.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Middle School Teacher — reading a cross-subject data pattern from an interdisciplinary team meeting, deciding whether a zero or grade drop reflects a mastery gap or an executive-function/compliance gap, designing an advisory period or interdisciplinary unit, ruling on a redo/retake request, or writing a parent progress note grounded in team data.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a millwright — rigging and setting a machine skid onto a new foundation, calculating sling-angle load factors for an asymmetric lift, leveling and epoxy-grouting a machine base, laser-aligning a motor-to-driven-equipment coupling within RPM-appropriate tolerance, or diagnosing a post-startup vibration/misalignment problem traced back to the install.

Use when a task needs the judgment of an Industrial Engineering Technologist/Technician — sizing a time study or work-sampling study to hit a target confidence and precision, computing normal and standard time from rated stopwatch observations plus a PFD allowance, screening foreign elements/outliers out of raw time-study data, auditing whether an engineer's line balance is still holding against re-timed station data, or validating a work-sampling-derived allowance against the tabled PFD percentage it's about to replace.

Use when a task needs the judgment of an Industrial Machinery Mechanic — reading vibration/thermal/oil-analysis trends to catch a bearing or gearbox failure before it happens, tracing a fault to lubrication, misalignment, or a design/loading flaw instead of just swapping the part, setting PM/PdM intervals on production-critical rotating equipment, or planning a laser shaft alignment or LOTO-governed repair.

Use when a task needs the judgment of an industrial-organizational psychologist — validating a selection test or interview protocol, running an adverse-impact analysis on hiring or promotion data, designing a performance-rating system, conducting a job analysis to anchor KSAOs, or defending an assessment tool's job-relatedness under an OFCCP/EEOC audit. Distinct from hr-people-manager and hr-specialist, which execute hiring and leave/compliance programs — this role owns the psychometric and legal-defensibility science behind the selection and appraisal tools those roles use.

Use when a task needs the judgment of an Industrial Production Manager — running a manufacturing plant/production line, diagnosing a throughput or quality problem, planning capacity and staffing against demand, or evaluating a process change or capital investment on the production floor.

Use when a task needs the judgment of an Industrial Truck and Tractor Operator — checking a load against a forklift's rated capacity and load center, judging stability-triangle tip-over risk before raising or tilting a load, verifying rack beam load-capacity before stacking a pallet, managing pedestrian-forklift traffic in a shared warehouse aisle, or deciding whether an operator needs recertification after an incident.

Use when a task needs the judgment of an insulation installer — sizing and sequencing an attic, wall, or floor insulation job to a climate zone's code-required R-value, choosing between fiberglass batt, blown cellulose, or open-/closed-cell spray foam for a cavity, deciding whether exposed foam needs a thermal barrier, or diagnosing an ice-dam, moisture, or failed blower-door result against the installed assembly.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Mining and Geological Engineer — running a pit-slope or underground-opening stability check (limit-equilibrium factor of safety, RMR/Q ground support design), setting an economic cutoff grade or reading a grade-tonnage curve for reserve definition, sizing mine ventilation airflow against MSHA quantity standards, or sequencing extraction/stope design for an ore body under a stability or economic constraint.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Mixing/Blending Machine Operator — deciding whether a low-concentration ingredient needs a premix step before full-batch incorporation, verifying blend uniformity via multi-location sampling and CV calculation rather than appearance, recognizing that more mixing time isn't always better, or re-validating uniformity when a formula is scaled to a larger batch size.

Use when a task needs the judgment of a Machine Learning/AI Engineer — checking a train/test split for data leakage, choosing an evaluation metric that accounts for class imbalance rather than defaulting to accuracy, verifying training and serving feature computation match (train-serving skew), monitoring a deployed model for data/concept drift, or deciding whether a hyperparameter-tuning process has silently overfit to the test set.