Post orders your officers
will actually follow.
Post orders are the operating system of a guard post. What a complete set contains, the exact twelve-section structure to copy, an eight-step writing process, and the mistakes that turn orders into shelf-ware nobody reads on the night it matters.
If it is not written,
it is not an order.
SECURICO writes site-specific post orders for every post it staffs, before any officer stands a solo shift. Here is the structure we use — copy it freely, whether or not you ever hire us.
- Definition Written, site-specific instructions for one post.
- The test A competent new officer can run the post cold.
- Ownership Drafted by the provider, approved by the client.
- Specificity Names, gate numbers, times — never vague verbs.
- Force policy Observe, report, deter — spelled out in writing.
- Emergencies Every scenario scripted before it happens.
- Updates Reviewed quarterly and after every incident.
- Legal weight They define the standard of care on your site.
When something goes wrong, the post orders are Exhibit A.
Three shifts, weekend relief and vacation backfill all run the post identically — because the post, not the person, carries the knowledge.
Good orders make decisions in advance, while everyone is calm — so the officer at 2 a.m. executes a plan instead of improvising one.
In litigation, post orders are among the first documents requested. Clear, current, followed orders anchor your defense; vague or stale ones open the other side's slideshow.
Officers change; the document should not care. A site whose security lives in one veteran officer's head loses it the day that officer leaves.
What post orders are — and are not
Post orders are the written, site-specific instructions for a single guard post: the mission, duties, routes, rules, contacts and emergency actions for that post, at that property, on those shifts. They are not the service contract, which governs the commercial relationship; not the company handbook, which governs employment; and not generic standard operating procedures, which describe how the provider does things everywhere. The distinction matters because each document does a different legal and operational job — and because a site protected by a photocopied template with another building's name in paragraph four has, functionally, no post orders at all.
The completeness test
A complete set of post orders lets a competent officer who has never seen your property run the post correctly on the first night: find the post, control the right doors against the right rules, walk the right routes at the right frequency, recognize what abnormal looks like, respond to each emergency in the intended order, write down what the client needs written, and know exactly who to call at every escalation level — including at 3 a.m. on a holiday. Read your current orders against that test honestly. Most fail on the last two items.
Access control: the section with no judgment calls
Most post-order failures are access failures, and most access failures are ambiguity: the orders say authorized personnel only and never define authorized. A good access section is brutally concrete — which credentials pass, which lists govern, and what happens with a visitor, a vendor, a delivery, a terminated employee, a process server, law enforcement without a warrant, and the owner personally when they forget their badge. Every one of those will eventually happen. If the officer has to guess, the site owns the guess.
Emergency procedures: script the worst night
The emergency section is written for a reader whose heart rate is 140: short numbered actions, one scenario per page, phone numbers inline — never see appendix C. Cover at minimum fire and alarm activation, medical emergency, break-in in progress versus discovered afterwards, weapon on site, threats or violence toward staff, vehicle incidents, utility failure and severe weather. For each: the first action, the call order, the evacuate-or-shelter decision rule, what to preserve as evidence, and what to say to nobody — the media policy is one line long: refer everything to the named client contact.
Use of force, detention and the observe-and-report line
The safest and most defensible posture for the overwhelming majority of commercial posts is observe, report and deter: the officer is a professional witness with a radio, not a one-person police force. Whatever posture you choose, write it explicitly — when force is never used, what happens instead of pursuit, whether detention is authorized at all and under exactly what circumstances, and how state law bounds all of it. Whether the post runs armed changes this section entirely — the decision itself is covered in our armed vs unarmed guide. Silence here does not create flexibility; it creates improvisation, and improvisation under adrenaline is how lawsuits are born.
Reporting: the proof the work happened
Specify the artifacts: a daily activity report every shift, incident reports for the enumerated event types, photo standards, and timestamps from a system the client can actually see rather than a paper binder on the podium. Modern posts back this with GPS-verified checkpoints and live digital reporting — the SECURICO reporting stack streams patrols, photos and incidents to the client in real time — but the principle predates the technology: if it was not written down, it did not happen, and if the client cannot see it, it barely counts.
The mistakes that kill post orders
Five patterns account for most dead binders. The template with the wrong building name — orders written for everywhere protect nowhere. Vague verbs — monitor, patrol regularly, ensure security — that no two officers execute alike. Stale contacts — the escalation list with two departed managers on it, discovered during an actual emergency. Missing authority — no statement of what the officer may decide alone versus must escalate. And no update cycle, so the orders describe the property as it was two tenants ago. Every one of these is cheap to fix on a calm Tuesday and expensive to discover mid-incident.
Keeping them alive
Treat post orders like software: versioned, dated, reviewed on a schedule, patched after every failure. A quarterly review against the site as it exists now. An immediate update after any incident, tenant change, construction, or shift in what the client cares about. A signature page proving every officer on the rotation has read the current version. And a change log, so when someone asks why the officer did what they did, the answer traces to a dated revision instead of folklore. A provider that resists this cadence is telling you how seriously they take the document.
How SECURICO handles post orders
Every SECURICO post gets site-specific written orders before the first solo shift: drafted from a site walk and client interviews, reviewed with the client line by line, trained and signed by every officer on the rotation, and revised quarterly plus after any incident — with the current version visible to the client alongside live patrol and incident reporting. It is baked into how SECURICO works on every post, from a single lobby to a multi-state portfolio, and it is included in the rate rather than sold as an extra. If your current provider cannot produce your orders on request, that is worth knowing before renewal.
How it runs, start to finish
Not at noon if the post runs midnight. Walk every route, gate, dock, stairwell and blind spot at the hour the officer will, and record what the site actually looks like then — lighting, activity, access points, and where trouble arrives from.
Property manager, facilities, the outgoing provider if there is one, the tenant who complains most. Ask what actually happens here: the recurring problems, the after-hours patterns, and the incident that made you call a guard company in the first place.
One paragraph stating what this post protects and against what. Every duty that follows must trace back to it — a duty that serves no threat is scope creep with a flashlight.
Not a task list — a shift narrative: what happens at post start, through each hour, at shift change and at post close. Name the patrol routes, fix the checkpoint locations, and state the frequency the client is actually paying for.
Fire, medical, break-in, weapon on site, alarm activation, hostile ex-employee, media at the gate. For each: what the officer does first, who gets called in what order, what gets written down — and what the officer never does.
Which events produce a report, what a report must contain, when photos are required, and when the client gets woken up versus briefed in the morning. Reporting discipline is what turns an officer into evidence.
Have counsel or your provider's compliance desk check anything touching use of force, detention, searches and trespass enforcement against state law. This is the section that gets read aloud in depositions — write it that way.
No officer stands the post solo before reading the orders and signing that they did. Date and version every revision, keep the superseded copies, and put a quarterly review plus post-incident updates on the calendar now.
The twelve sections of complete post orders
| Section | What it must answer |
|---|---|
| Post identification | Which post, which property, which shifts — effective date and version |
| Mission statement | What this post protects, and against what |
| Chain of command | Who the officer reports to, client contacts, escalation order with numbers |
| Post description | Physical boundaries, fixed post versus patrol, equipment on post |
| Duties by time block | What happens at post start, each hour, shift change and close |
| Access control rules | Exactly who passes, on which credential — and what happens to everyone else |
| Patrol routes and frequency | Named routes, checkpoints, timing and randomization rules |
| Emergency procedures | First actions, call order and decision rules for every scenario |
| Use of force and detention | The posture, its limits, and what happens instead of force |
| Reporting requirements | Which events produce which artifacts, and who sees them, when |
| Prohibited actions | What the officer never does on this post, without exception |
| Site-specific notes | The local knowledge: dead zones, problem doors, recurring characters |
Common questions
What are post orders in security?+
Who writes post orders — the client or the security company?+
What should security post orders include?+
How often should post orders be updated?+
Are post orders legally significant?+
What is the difference between post orders and standard operating procedures?+
Coverage where your sites are
One operations standard from coast to coast: the same licensed officers, written post orders and live reporting, whether you run one site or a portfolio across state lines.
How to Write Security Guard Post Orders (Step-by-Step)
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