Your roll call is only as accurate as your departure records

Card 15

A practice alarm on a Tuesday morning. People from the halls and offices stand at the assembly point while supervisors report the headcount for their shifts. Supervisors have their own people in time and attendance, but they don't know the contractor technician or the drivers at the dock by name. So the guard holds the notebook of issued cards. A few cards never came back, among them card 15.

EHS managers describe this moment to us in almost the same words. “If there's a fire here, the guard knows there's card 15 in here,” one of them told us. Who has the card, and whether that person is still inside, nobody at the gatehouse knows. Another put it this way: “Counting those people turns out to be physically impossible.”

Arrivals always get recorded, departures rarely

Arrivals record themselves, because the person needs to get in. A departure holds nobody up, so it is easy to skip. A driver leaves after loading, a contractor technician walks out through the other gate, and a host sees a visitor out to their car. In the notebook, all three are still on site.

On our calls we hear it in numbers too: “we issue 50 cards and 30 come back.” At the assembly point, people then look for workers who went home hours ago. Counting heads faster won't change that. A list of who is on site is only as accurate as your record of departures.

Where a turnstile or card collector records the exit

At the entrances of 70+ sites, we see the list match reality where nobody has to remember the departure. A connected turnstile records it on its own. Where a turnstile can't be connected, a card collector helps: on the way out, the person drops the card into the collector, and that ends their visit. Issuing and returning a card are both recorded against a specific person, so the gatehouse knows who has card 15, not just that it is missing. Signing out at the kiosk or one click in the Portal covers the rest. A departure no longer depends on someone remembering it at peak time.

Employees don't usually pass through the kiosk. Once we connect to the access control system you use, they are on the same evacuation roll call too. The next drill shows whether your departure records work: whoever stayed on the list after leaving points to the entrance where departures go unrecorded.

How it works at Model Obaly

Suppliers, contractors, auditors and job applicants arrive at the Model Obaly plant in Opava throughout the day. A staffed reception desk used to handle all of it. Today a self‑service kiosk at the main entrance checks them in. In an emergency everyone on site receives an SMS with the evacuation plan and confirms with one tap that they are safe.

Pavla Bolacká, H&S Manager, puts it this way: “I finally have a real‑time overview of everyone on site, ready for any inspection or evacuation.” The Model Obaly case study describes the whole process.