Resources
What to check in a security post’s orders.
A post orders checklist for Palo Alto properties: the station and its hours, shift duties, rounds, visitor rules, logs, call lists and the shift handoff, ready to print.
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Printable checklist
What the orders are for.
Post orders are the instructions an officer reads before a first shift on your property and returns to whenever something stops being routine. They turn your expectations into a document the officer can act on at the desk, in the garage or at a side door at 11 p.m., without guessing what you would want.
Use this checklist two ways. Before coverage starts, walk it beside the draft we prepare after the free walkthrough and mark anything missing. Once a post has been running for a while, use it as an audit: orders tend to drift as tenants change, doors get rekeyed and new vendors appear, and a quick pass shows which pages have fallen behind the building.
The printable version is a plain download. Print one sheet per post, tick each line the current orders answer, and note the gaps for the next revision.
The station and its hours.
Start with where the officer stands and when. A vague station leads to an officer who drifts toward wherever seems busy, and a vague schedule leaves gaps at the start and end of each shift. The first page of the orders should settle both.
- The exact station: lobby desk, guardhouse, garage booth or dock office
- When each shift begins and ends, with weekends and holidays on their own line
- How the desk is left during a round: phone forwarded, door locked, sign posted
- The radios, keys, flashlights and visitor log that stay at the station
- Where the officer parks, enters and takes breaks
- Armed or unarmed coverage, hour by hour
Duties by shift, and the rounds.
A morning shift and a closing shift on the same post rarely do the same work. Mornings tend to center on opening doors, greeting early staff and taking deliveries; evenings on clearing floors, checking that people have left and locking up. Write each shift’s duties as its own short list so an officer covering a different shift can see the difference at a glance.
Rounds need the same precision. A round that says only “walk the building” produces logs nobody can compare. Name the route, the checkpoints and what the officer looks at when standing at each one.
- Opening tasks for the first shift, in order
- Lockup tasks for the last shift, including lights, gates and alarm setting
- The round route, with each checkpoint named
- What to check at each point: door latched, gate chained, lights working, nothing left out
- How many rounds per shift and roughly when
- How each round is time-logged
Access, visitors and deliveries.
For most Peninsula offices and campuses, access is the heart of the post. This section should read like a short procedure manual for the front door. Your badge, key and escort rules belong here in your own words, since the officer follows them as written. Our security guard services page explains how a reception post runs day to day.
Think about the odd cases as well as the daily ones. A former employee who still has a badge, a moving crew booked by a tenant on a Saturday, or a guest who insists on going upstairs alone are the situations where an officer most needs a written answer.
- People who can skip the sign-in, and what they show the officer
- Sign-in steps for guests with an appointment
- What happens when a guest arrives unannounced
- Courier, food delivery and vendor handling
- Areas that require an escort, listed by name
- After-hours entry: who is allowed and how it is recorded
- Lost badges and keys: who to tell and what to log
Reports, logs and the call list.
Every shift on your property ends with a shift report emailed to the people you name, and incidents get their own write-up with photos. The orders should say who receives those reports and what belongs in the running log during the shift, so the record reads the same no matter which officer wrote it.
The call list deserves the most care. Spell out which events the officer handles alone, which ones warrant a call to your on-call lead right away, and which simply go in the morning report. Police and fire come first on that list, then your own contacts in the order you want them tried.
- Report recipients for shift and incident reports
- What goes in the running log and how entries are timed
- Police and fire numbers, plus the property’s street address as dispatchers need it
- Your contacts in calling order, with backups
- Which events need a call now and which can wait for the report
- Separate contacts for facilities problems such as leaks or failed locks
The handoff between shifts.
The weakest moment on many posts is the ten minutes of overlap at a change of shift. Without a set routine, an open item from the evening can vanish by morning. A good handoff section reads like a script both officers follow.
On a 24-hour post, this happens two or three times a day, so the routine has to be quick. On a business-hours post that hands over to patrol, the last officer’s lockup round becomes the handoff, and the orders should say what the patrol officer is told about the day.
- Open items briefed in person, not only written in the log
- Keys and equipment counted and signed for
- Vehicles, guests or late workers still on site noted
- Expected deliveries or late arrivals passed along
- Both officers sign the log at the change of shift
Keeping the orders current.
Orders should change whenever the property does: a new tenant, a construction phase, new hours or an incident that exposed a gap. We review them with you at each of those points, and because coverage runs month to month, the post itself can grow or shrink when the building changes. If you are preparing for coverage now, start with our walkthrough checklist, then book the free walkthrough and a written quote will follow.
A few useful answers
Common questions
Who drafts the orders for our property?
We do, together with you, after the free walkthrough, using your access rules, contacts and hours. You read the draft and mark changes before the first shift, and every revision goes back into the written orders.
How much detail belongs in the orders?
Short enough that an officer can read the core pages before a shift. Keep the daily routine on a few pages, and attach longer procedures, such as a full emergency plan, at the back.
Do armed posts need different orders?
Yes. The orders name which hours and positions are armed, and the access, reporting and handoff sections still apply in full. Our officers are BSIS guard card holders, and anyone posted armed holds an exposed-firearm permit on top of that.
Where should the orders be kept?
At the post itself, where every officer working that station can read them during a shift. Keep your own copy as well so you can check them against this list.
What happens when something comes up that the orders don’t cover?
The officer follows the call list, reaches the contact named for that kind of problem and logs what happened. The gap is then written into the next revision.