Guard roster that breaches a standing order
Five Rangers - Ali, Bilal, Danish, Farhan and Gul - must be posted one each to Gate, Tower, Wireless, Store and Patrol for the night. The standing orders are: (1) only Bilal and Danish hold the wireless qualification, and the Wireless post must be filled; (2) Ali is not to be posted to Tower; (3) if Farhan is posted to Store then Danish must be posted to Gate; (4) Gul must not be posted to Patrol unless Farhan is posted to Store. A junior NCO submits this roster: Ali–Tower, Bilal–Wireless, Danish–Gate, Farhan–Store, Gul–Patrol. He argues that it satisfies orders (1), (3) and (4) and that order (2) is 'only a preference'. The duty officer has ten minutes to accept, amend or reject the roster before the guard mounting parade.
1. Audit the submitted roster against each of the four orders, and decide whether the NCO's claim about order (2) can be accepted.
Read the worked answer
Order (1): Bilal is on Wireless and is qualified - satisfied. Order (3): Farhan is on Store, and Danish is on Gate - satisfied. Order (4): Gul is on Patrol; the condition attached is that Farhan be on Store, and Farhan is on Store - so the restriction is not triggered and the order is satisfied. The NCO is correct about (4). Order (2): Ali is on Tower - breached.
On the "preference" argument: a standing order binds until it is amended in writing by the authority that issued it. Nothing in the wording grades order (2) as a preference, and a junior NCO has no power to reclassify it. Three out of four is not compliance; the roster is invalid as submitted.
Decision: reject as submitted, and tell the NCO exactly which clause failed. He has ten minutes to bring back a corrected roster, and the duty officer should not fix it silently for him - the point of guard mounting is that the man on the ground can apply the orders himself.
2. Produce a valid roster using the smallest possible number of changes, and show why other single swaps fail.
Read the worked answer
Swap Ali and Gul only: Ali–Patrol, Bilal–Wireless, Danish–Gate, Farhan–Store, Gul–Tower.
Check: (1) Bilal on Wireless ✓; (2) Ali is on Patrol, not Tower ✓; (3) Farhan on Store with Danish on Gate ✓; (4) Gul is not on Patrol, so the condition does not arise ✓. One change, all four orders met.
Why the other one-for-one swaps fail:
- Ali with Danish: Danish goes to Tower, but Farhan on Store then requires Danish on Gate - contradiction.
- Ali with Farhan: Farhan leaves Store, so Gul on Patrol breaks order (4).
- Ali with Bilal: an unqualified man takes Wireless - order (1) broken.
So the Ali–Gul exchange is the unique one-swap repair. That matters operationally: a unique minimal fix can be read out on parade in one sentence, whereas a reshuffle of three or four posts invites argument and delay. The duty officer should still verify each clause before signing, because the roster is his responsibility once he accepts it.
3. Gul is declared unfit at the last minute and no replacement has arrived. Explain what the orders now permit and what the duty officer must do.
Read the worked answer
Four men cannot fill five posts, and orders (1) and (2) still bind: Wireless must be Bilal or Danish, and Ali cannot take Tower. There is no roster of four that fills all five posts, so the duty officer must either call a spare from the reserve list or merge two posts under one man and record it in the orders book with the reason.
If posts are merged, the pair must not include Wireless - a wireless operator watching a gate is not watching the net - so a defensible merge is Gate and Tower under Danish, or Store and Patrol under Ali, with the company commander informed before the parade rather than after.
What must not happen is an unfilled post or a silent reallocation. Tower and Wireless are the two posts the orders treat as non-negotiable; leaving either unmanned is an operational failure that a later board will treat as a command failure, not an administrative slip. The duty officer's judgement call is therefore between asking for a spare and merging posts, and both choices must be written down at the time.