On this page (7)
An evacuation list will not show people whose entry the system did not record: those who came in through a door without a reader, or followed someone else in on a single card swipe. Nor will it tell you whether a registered driver is sitting in the cab or has walked over to the warehouse, and it will show as present anyone who left without swiping out. A list of people on site is only as complete as the registration of entries, and on a typical site not every way in leaves a trace in the system.
Entrances without a reader
A maintenance gate, a gate opened by hand for an oversized delivery, a way through the neighbouring site: anyone who came in by one of these routes will not be on the list.
The first step is to mark every way in on the site plan and highlight the ones the system does not cover. Once you know there are, say, three such places, you plan the muster procedure differently.
Tailgating: two people on one card swipe
Two people pass through the gate on a single card swipe. It happens all the time, and there is no point pretending the problem does not exist. Where it can be done, a turnstile instead of a swing gate helps: a mechanical solution that no software can replace.
The driver who stayed in the cab
The vehicle is registered, so formally the driver is on site. The list cannot tell you whether they are sitting in the cab in the parking area or have gone into the warehouse. At the muster, vehicles have to be checked as a separate item rather than assuming the driver will turn up of their own accord.
People who left without swiping out
Someone walks out through an open gate alongside a vehicle, or while a reader is out of order, and stays on the list even though they have gone. This gap is less dangerous than the others but more of a nuisance, because it drags out the muster with a search for someone who went home long ago. Closing visits automatically after a set time stops the list filling up with people from a week ago.
Fire alarms, locating people and the muster procedure
TraxSystem does not detect fire or raise the alarm, because it is not a fire alarm system. It does not locate people inside a building. The list tells you who is on site, and it knows the zone only from the last pass through a reader. It does not replace the procedure; it provides the list that the person running the muster reaches for. Nor does it count people whose entry nobody recorded, and that limitation applies to every card-based system, not to one product.
What a named list of people on site gives you at the muster
In TraxSystem, instead of ‘roughly a hundred people’ you get a named list of employees, drivers and visitors, frozen at the moment of the alarm, with ticking off at the assembly point and a record of who marked whom as accounted for. The list is not perfect, but you know where its gaps are, so you can allow for them in the procedure instead of discovering them during a drill.
Questions and answers
How do we find out how many gaps our site has?
Go through the site plan and mark every way in, including the maintenance ones. There are usually more of them than security remembers.
Is there any point running a drill on this list?
Yes. A drill is the cheapest way to make the gaps show up before an incident rather than during one.
Does the list work in a power cut?
Only for as long as the system works, so your evacuation procedure has to provide for a printout or another fallback.
Can we see the list from a week ago?
Yes. Snapshots are saved and stay available for the period covered by your data retention settings.
What do we need for the list to include employees as well?
The People access control module. Evacuation support is part of the base system, but the list covers employees, visitors and subcontractors only with that module. You can price the base together with the module in the pricing configurator.
See also: The evacuation list: how to get it in three minutes · How many people are on site right now · Controlling vehicle dwell time on site