Despite the title of their rating, the responsibilities and duties of Sailors serving as Equipment Operators (EOs) go far beyond the use of heavy industrial equipment. For example, consider a quarry being built to extract raw materials for use in constructingt buildings and fortifications. Equipment Operators don’t just wheel their vehicles into a magically prepared pit to scoop up and haul out the rocks, stones, and crushed sand that will be converted into cement and concrete. First, a Chief Equipment Operator must develop plans for the quarry, assisted by the topographical and geographical charts drawn up by Engineering Aides. Next, blasting operations are carried out by an Equipment Operator under the supervision of a Chief EO, who also happens to be in charge of the qualification and certification processes that EO must pass in order to perform the blasting in the first place.
Quarrying the raw materials seems rather straightforward, but here again other processes need to be performed. Rocks and boulders need to be crushed in order to break them down into manageable sizes, and some minerals need to undergo some type of washing or sifting to remove impurities or unwanted components. Throughout these steps, attention must be paid to drainage and other side effects of quarrying that could damage the environment or pose health hazards to personnel. And before the materials that have been extracted can be put to use in construction, tests must be performed to assure their quality for use in mixing the concrete and cement—something civilians used to picking up bags of these items at hardware stores never have to deal with.
Add in jobs from a variety of other disciplines such as design, drafting, surveying, and underwater construction, and you get a better idea at just how broad the scope of an Equipment Operator’s job can be.
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