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Security post orders template
written per position
The right test for a set of post orders is not whether it looks thorough. It is whether an officer who has never stood that position, sent to cover a call-off at short notice, can work the post competently after fifteen minutes with the document. Almost no binder passes that test. This outline is built to — thirteen sections, each with what it has to contain and why officers ignore it when it is missing.
The outline is on this page. Nothing to download and no address to leave. Copy the sections into your own document, drop the ones a given post does not need, and keep your general orders in a separate set that every position inherits.
The thirteen sections
In this order. Sections one to six are what a relief officer reads before taking the post; seven to thirteen are what they work from during it.
1. Identification and control block
Client, site, exact position, effective date, the version label you are using, who wrote it, who approved it and the date of the next review. Put it on page one. A set of orders with no identifiable version is the reason two officers on the same site work to different rules.
2. Purpose of the post
Two or three sentences on why this position exists and what it is meant to prevent. An officer who knows the post exists to stop unaccompanied contractors reaching the plant room will make better decisions in the situations the document never anticipated — and there will be plenty of those.
3. Hours, coverage and relief
The days and hours the post is manned, whether it is continuous, how relief and breaks are covered, and precisely what an officer does if the relief has not arrived. That last one needs a rule and a number to call, because in its absence the officer either abandons the post or works an unauthorised double.
4. Uniform, equipment and appearance
What is worn, what is carried, what is issued at the start of the shift and accounted for at the end. Radio and channel, keys and fobs, torch, phone, vehicle, PPE where the site requires it. If the client has grooming or badge-visibility requirements, they belong here rather than in a verbal briefing.
5. Physical description of the post
The geography, written for somebody who has never been there: entrances and their designations, the areas covered, the areas explicitly not covered, restricted zones, camera positions, alarm panel locations, utility shut-offs, the muster point and the nearest emergency access. A relief officer reads this section first.
6. Access control rules
Who may enter, on what authority, and what is recorded for each category — employees, contractors, deliveries, visitors, emergency services, the client. State the badge or identification standard, whether escorting is required, what to do with an unbadged person who is plainly senior, and the exact wording of a refusal. Write the refusal script out; officers will use whatever words you give them.
7. Sequence of the shift
The shift in order: arrive, receive handover, check equipment, first round, fixed duties by time, last round, handover out. This is the section a new officer works from for their first week and the one supervisors audit against. If a duty has a time attached, put the time in.
8. Patrol and inspection detail
Routes, frequency, what to check at each point and what evidence is required. Vary the timing deliberately and say so, because a patrol that leaves at exactly the same minute is a schedule published to anybody watching. Name the specific things being checked at each point rather than writing check the area.
9. Reporting requirements
What goes in the daily log, what triggers a separate incident report, what needs a photograph, and the deadline for each. Say which events must be reported immediately rather than at end of shift, and to whom. An officer who is unsure whether something is worth reporting will not report it.
10. Emergency procedures
One subsection per scenario, each short enough to be read under pressure: fire and evacuation, medical, active threat, bomb threat, power failure, flood, severe weather, elevator entrapment, hazardous spill. First action, who to call, what to secure, what to document. If a subsection needs a page, it is too long to be used.
11. Contact and escalation tree
Names, roles, numbers and the order in which they are called, with the hours each is reachable and an alternate for every entry. Include your own supervisor and operations desk, the client contacts, facilities, and emergency services. Every wrong number in this list is discovered at three in the morning.
12. Prohibited conduct and post-specific rules
The things this client will terminate a contract over: phone use at the desk, leaving the post unattended, admitting people on trust, sleeping, accepting gifts, discussing the site publicly or online, media contact. Keep it to what is actually enforced at this post, because a list of thirty rules nobody applies teaches officers that none of them are real.
13. Acknowledgement and review
A signature block for the officer, the supervisor and, where the contract requires it, the client. Then the review schedule: a date, an owner, and a record of what changed. Orders that are never reviewed drift out of alignment with the site within a year, and nobody notices until an incident exposes it.
A worked opening block
What sections one to three look like when they are filled in properly for a single position rather than for a whole contract.
POST ORDERS — MERIDIAN CENTRE, NORTH DOCK
Client: Meridian Property Group · Site: Meridian Centre, 400 Arlington Ave
Position: North Dock, gatehouse 2 · Version 4 · Effective 12 Jan 2026
Written by: J. Okafor, Site Supervisor · Approved by: M. Reyes, Operations Manager
Next review: 12 Jan 2027, or on any change to dock access hours
PURPOSE
This post controls the only vehicle entrance to the loading area and the only route
from the yard into the building service corridor. It exists to ensure every vehicle
and every person entering the yard is recorded and authorised, and that no
unaccompanied contractor reaches the service corridor or the plant room on level B1.
HOURS AND RELIEF
Manned continuously, 7 days. Shifts 0600–1800 and 1800–0600.
Breaks are covered by the roving officer; the post is never left unmanned.
If relief has not arrived by shift end +10 minutes: remain on post, notify the
operations desk on the number in section 11, and record the time in the log. Do not
leave the post and do not close the gate to authorised traffic.
Five mistakes that make post orders useless
One document for a site with four positions
The main gate, the lobby, the dock and the roving unit have different rules, different contacts and different failure modes. Bundled into one binder, every officer carries three sets of instructions that do not apply to them, and the one that does is buried on page nine. Write them per position.
Repeating your general orders in every set
Uniform standards, radio discipline, conduct and reporting obligations are company-wide. Copied into forty documents, they are forty places to edit when one of them changes, and after the second change the copies disagree. Keep them as a single general order set that every post inherits.
A binder written to impress the client
Orders written to be read by a prospect at contract signature end up ninety pages long and are never opened by an officer again. The test is whether a relief officer who has never stood the post can work it competently from the document in fifteen minutes.
No stated behaviour for the unanticipated
No document covers everything, so include the rule for what is not covered: secure, observe, report, and call this number. Without it, an officer facing something novel either invents a policy or does nothing, and both end up on your desk.
An acknowledgement signed once, years ago
A signature page filled in at post assignment proves an officer signed something on a Tuesday in March. It says nothing about whether the officer standing the post tonight has seen the amendment that changed the escalation chain in June. Re-acknowledge on change, not only at hire.
Questions supervisors ask about post orders
What are post orders?+
They are the written instructions governing one specific position at one specific site: what the officer standing there does, in what order, under what authority, and who they contact when something falls outside the script. They are the operational contract between your company, your client and the officer, and in most contract guarding relationships they are also the document produced first when something goes wrong.
What is the difference between general orders and post orders?+
General orders are company-wide and apply to every officer regardless of where they are assigned: uniform and grooming, radio discipline, reporting obligations, conduct, what to do if approached by the media. Post orders are specific to one position at one site: this door, this patrol pattern, this contact tree, these vehicle rules. Keeping them separate is what stops a company-wide change from having to be edited into every site document.
How long should a set of post orders be?+
Short enough to be read in one sitting by a relief officer covering a call-off. In practice that means the post-specific content usually lands between six and fifteen pages, with the emergency procedures as short scannable subsections rather than prose. Length is not thoroughness: a ninety-page binder is a document that has been added to for years and never edited, and the parts that matter are unfindable inside it.
Who writes them and who approves them?+
Drafting is usually done by whoever knows the post — the site supervisor or the account manager — working from a survey of the property. Approval should sit with operations, and where the contract requires it, with the client. The two roles are worth keeping separate: the person who knows the site is not always the person accountable for whether the instruction is defensible.
How often should they be reviewed?+
On a fixed schedule and on every trigger. The schedule is typically annual; the triggers are what actually keep them accurate — a change to the property, a change of client contact, a serious incident, a new service line, or a complaint. Put the next review date on page one where it is visible, because a review that lives only in a calendar reminder is a review that gets postponed.
How do we keep revisions under control on paper?+
Give every set a version label and a date on the cover, keep one master and treat every printed binder as a copy that must be replaced whole rather than patched with loose pages. Record what changed and who approved it in the review block. This is a discipline your company has to run: the reason paper orders drift is that swapping a page in a binder in a guard shack depends on somebody remembering to do it.
Should the client sign off on post orders?+
Usually yes, and it is worth insisting even where the contract does not require it. Client sign-off converts an assumption into an instruction, which matters when an officer follows the document and the client later says they expected something different. It also surfaces the requirements the client had never put in writing, which is generally where the interesting ones are.
What changes when post orders live in an app?+
In CGuardPro orders are written against the position rather than handed to a person, so whoever is scheduled to that post — the regular officer, a relief, an overtime fill-in from another site — opens that post orders on their phone at the start of the shift. Recurring items can be scheduled daily, on weekdays or weekends, weekly, monthly or as a single date, and each completion is recorded against the occurrence it was due on, with the officer named and whatever they attached.
Attach the orders to the post, not to a binder
Whoever is scheduled to a position opens that position orders on their phone when the shift starts, including a relief who has never been there. Recurring duties arrive as the occurrences they are due on, and each one is completed with a time, a name and whatever the officer attached.