Admin: Set Up Guard Patrol
Admin: set up guard patrol
QR checkpoint patrols replace the signature in the guard register with evidence: a tag at each point, scanned as the guard passes, timestamped server-side so it cannot be back-dated.
This guide covers placing checkpoints, building a schedule, and reading the result.
Before you start
- You are a society admin or committee member with the safety role
- You have walked the property and know where the risk points are
- You have spoken to the security agency supervisor — see the briefing note below
- You know whether guards will scan on a society device or their own
Step 1: Place the checkpoints
Go to /admin/patrol and create a checkpoint for each point on the route.
Where to put them:
- Where the risk is, not where it is convenient. The rear gate, the basement and the terrace are where things happen. The main lobby, which the guard passes anyway, proves nothing.
- At least one behind a door that must be opened — terrace, pump room. These are the places an intruder uses and the places a guard skips.
- Out of easy reach and out of camera-line from the cabin, so presence is genuinely required.
- In an order that makes a sensible walk. If the sequence forces backtracking, guards will reorder it and your data becomes hard to read.
Ten to fifteen points is typical for a mid-size society. Twenty-five on a fifteen-minute round means the guard is scanning, not looking.
Print the QR tags and fix them weatherproofed.
Step 2: Build the schedule
Create schedule slots for the rounds you expect, by time. A common pattern is four night rounds at 22:00, 00:30, 03:00 and 05:00, plus two day rounds.
Slots are what make a missed round detectable. Without an expected schedule, "no scans since midnight" looks the same as "no patrol scheduled".
Match the slots to your actual shift pattern. If rounds are consistently ten minutes late, the schedule does not match the shift handover — adjust the slot rather than treating it as a failure.
Step 3: Brief the agency, then the guards
This is a labour-relations exercise as much as a technical one. Guards correctly read patrol monitoring as surveillance of their work, and if it is introduced as a gotcha you will get compliance-shaped behaviour rather than better security.
- Talk to the supervisor first. Patrol data will surface agency staffing problems; the supervisor needs to be a participant, not a defendant.
- Frame it as protection for the guard too. When a resident claims nobody patrolled the basement on the night their car was scratched, the scan log defends a guard who did their job.
- Show them the scanner. Starting a round, scanning, reporting an incident, ending the round.
- Agree what happens on a missed round — supervisor notified, logged, discussed at the monthly security review. Write it down.
Step 4: Run two weeks in observation mode
No consequences attached. Use it to fix route problems: tags that are unreachable, damaged, or in the wrong order.
Step 5: Read the day log
The day log shows every round, scan and incident for a date. Review it weekly at first, then monthly.
| Signal | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| One checkpoint consistently missed | Badly placed, unreachable, or the tag is damaged |
| Rounds consistently late | Schedule does not match shift handover — adjust the slot |
| All scans within 90 seconds | Guard walking with the tags, or tags photographed — investigate |
| Rounds marked abandoned | Started but never ended — staffing gap, or one guard covering two roles |
| Incidents near zero | Guards do not know they can report, or fear blame for reporting |
That last row is the one committees miss. A patrol system producing perfect rounds and zero incidents is not a well-run society; it is one where nobody feels safe reporting anything.
Incidents
A guard who finds something on a round — a jammed lift door, a light out in the basement — reports it against the round with a severity, and it carries through to resolution rather than disappearing at the end of the shift.
Review open incidents at the committee meeting. This is what turns patrol from a compliance ritual into an operations input.
Changing a route
Deactivate a checkpoint or slot rather than deleting it, so historical rounds stay readable.
What to report at the AGM
Rounds completed against rounds scheduled, incidents raised and closed, and median time from incident to resolution. This is also your evidence base for whether the society needs a third night guard.
Frequently asked questions
Can a guard cheat by photographing the QR codes? They can, which is why placement matters — points behind doors that must be opened, out of sight of the cabin. The scan-interval pattern also gives it away: a full route completed in ninety seconds is visible in the data.
Do we need special hardware? No. A phone camera reads the tags. A shared cabin device is usually cleaner than expecting staff to use personal phones and data.
What if there is no mobile signal in the basement? Scans queue and sync when the guard is back in coverage, keeping their original scan time. Test this in your basement during the observation fortnight.
What is an abandoned round? A round that was started but never ended within its window. It is a distinct signal from a round that was never started at all, and usually points to a staffing gap.
Does this replace CCTV? No. CCTV tells you what happened at a fixed point; patrol tells you a human was present across the whole property. Societies with serious security needs run both.
Who owns the patrol history if we change security agencies? The society. This is the main reason not to use an agency-supplied patrol app — you lose your baseline exactly when you most need it.
Related: Guard patrol with QR checkpoints explained · Admin: set up Emergency SOS · Society security checklist
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