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A post check-in is a regular confirmation that a person working alone is all right and can carry on working. Lone working monitoring is built on these check-ins. The worker confirms with a single action at set intervals, and the system keeps track of the timetable for them: if the confirmation does not arrive within the time window, it sends an alert to the supervisor. The value of the mechanism lies in that second part, the response to silence.
Post, schedule, confirmation and alert
A check-in is assigned to a post, meaning a place of work: the gatehouse, the weighbridge office, a workstation in a remote hall. The post stays put while the people staffing it change, so the procedure stays with the place and does not disappear when someone goes on holiday.
The post schedule defines the hours during which the post is staffed and how often a confirmation is due. A night watchman might check in every hour, an operator on the day shift every three hours.
The confirmation itself is a single action in a window of the application at the workstation. The fewer the steps, the better the chance that checking in becomes a habit and that nobody tries to get round it at the first opportunity.
If the confirmation does not arrive within the tolerance window, the system sends an alert by SMS and email to the designated people. The alert is the only element that does not rely on anyone remembering anything.
Why a check-in needs a tolerance window
A check-in every hour does not mean ‘exactly on the hour’. At that minute the worker may be on the phone, opening the gate or in the toilet. Without a tolerance window the system would generate a dozen or more false alarms per shift, and within a week nobody would respond to them. That is worse than having no system at all, because it creates an illusion of supervision.
A well-set tolerance window matters more than how often people check in. A check-in every two hours with a five-minute tolerance that people respond to protects better than a check-in every thirty minutes whose alerts everyone ignores.
The check-in log in TraxSystem
Every shift leaves a log: which post, who was on it, what time each confirmation came in and whether it was within the window, when an alert went out and to whom. That record counts after an incident, because it lets you show that the procedure was actually applied and not just written into a management instruction.
In TraxSystem the check-in log is linked to the duty log, so check-ins and events from the same shift are in one place. Check-ins are part of the Site security module, priced by the number of guard posts, and above the limit of the largest base package the price is quoted individually. The pricing configurator calculates the price for a specific number of posts.
A post without a schedule raises no alarm
In TraxSystem a post set to scheduled mode but with no schedules loaded is treated as off duty. The system expects no check-ins from it and will not raise an alarm.
This behaviour is deliberate, because otherwise every unstaffed post would flood the duty officer with alerts. The consequence is serious, though: a post without a schedule is just as quiet as a post where everything is fine, even though nobody is watching over it at all; the only thing that tells it apart is a grey ‘off duty’ tile on the board. It is the first thing to check at implementation acceptance and after every change to the rota.
The limits of check-ins: response time and fall detection devices
A post check-in does not detect the incident, only its consequence. The system does not know that someone has fallen; it knows that a confirmation has not arrived. When estimating response time, assume that the alert comes at the earliest once the tolerance window has expired.
TraxSystem does not replace personal safety devices with fall detection or emergency communications. It is an organisational layer on top of them.
Questions and answers
How does a post check-in differ from a patrol with checkpoints?
A patrol checks whether the officer walked the route; a check-in checks whether they are all right. Both can run side by side: the patrol looks after the quality of the service, the check-in after the person’s safety.
Can the worker confirm check-ins from a phone?
That depends on what is agreed during implementation. As standard, confirmation happens in a window of the application at the workstation, and the way of confirming is matched to what the worker has available at the post.
Who receives the alert?
The people on a configurable list of recipients, usually the duty officer and the security manager. The alert goes by SMS and email. The system records that the message was sent, not that it was received.
See also: Lone working on site: the employer’s duties and how to meet them · A worker missed a check-in: what should happen next · What is a security duty log