140 Contract Workers, One Turnstile, and 17 Missing Badges

Do not start from 'theft'. Enumerate the explanations and eliminate the cheap ones first:

1. Badges left in bags, on the scaffold or in lockers - most likely with 140 casual workers and one supervisor.
2. Workers left without passing the badge desk, because the return point is not on the exit path.
3. A badge never issued, or one badge shared by two men.

Order of action:

• Freeze the exit, not the people. The guard matches every leaver to the register by name. Do not lock the gate or stop work: a private guard has no power to confine 138 people, and doing so turns a badge count into an incident.
• Reconcile paper against people. The contractor's supervisor reads the 138 names aloud in the yard; each man steps forward; count. This costs ten minutes and settles the number.
• Then check the assets physically. A person opens the computer room, exam record room and storeroom and counts. CCTV footage is evidence afterwards, not a control now.
• Then record. Time, names unaccounted for, actions, signatures of guard, contractor supervisor and you.

'Two men unaccounted for' is a completely different report from '17 badges missing'. Get the number right before you write anything that will be read by the principal or the police.

Tailgating here is a throughput problem as much as a security problem. A control that creates a 15-minute queue will be defeated by the guard himself - and it was.

• Staggered entry by trade: painters 08:00, electricians 08:15, grill fitters 08:30, with the contractor's supervisor standing at the turnstile counting his own men. Costs nothing, keeps the queue within the guard's control, and puts the counting duty on the person who knows the faces. Best value by a wide margin.
• One-man-one-token, numbered, issued and collected at a desk beside the turnstile rather than behind it. This fixes the badge-return failure at its cause: the collection point was not on the exit path.
• Escort rule for the first-floor corridor: no worker enters the exam record room corridor unless a school employee is present, and the corridor toilet is closed to workers with a signed temporary alternative at the gate. Aim this at the asset that cannot be replaced; the computers can be insured, the exam records cannot.
• Rejected: biometric or ID cards for 140 casual workers on a two-month contract. Disproportionate cost and enrolment time, poor fingerprint reads on worn hands, and it buys a longer queue rather than control.

The principle: match the control to the asset's value and to the actual traffic pattern. A control the gate staff cannot physically sustain always fails.

Treat it as an unresolved access breach, not a proven theft.

• No search of his person, and never alone in a closed room. Ask him to come to the gate with you and the contractor's supervisor. Ask whether he is willing to show the tray and empty his pockets in front of both of you; record whether he consented. If he refuses, stop.
• Ask, don't accuse: which supervisor sent him, which tap he was looking for, who can confirm it. Then verify - call the supervisor, check whether a water point even exists on that floor.
• Check the room immediately: door locked, grill intact, records counted. That answers the question that actually matters, and it answers it in five minutes.
• Record: time, location, name, contractor, stated reason, verification result, witnesses, action taken. Copy to the contractor.
• If the room is intact and the story checks out, log it as an escort-rule breach, re-brief the supervisors, and leave it there. Branding a contractor's worker a thief on suspicion will cost you the cooperation of every supervisor on site for the rest of the job. If the room is not intact, preserve the scene and call the principal and the police.