Construction site security at night and at weekends

• Working hours: 11 hours × 5 days = 55 hours.
• Weeknights: 18:00–07:00 = 13 hours × 4 nights = 52 hours.
• Weekend: Friday 18:00 to Monday 07:00 = 6 + 24 + 24 + 7 = 61 hours.
• Total empty hours: 168 − 55 = 113 hours a week.

With full-time work at 40 hours a week (Labour Code, Article 189), covering one post for all those hours takes 113 ÷ 40 ≈ 2.83 full-time positions, before leave and cover. How to run this for other schedules is in the guide how many security guards do I need. What gets stolen, and why the empty hours are the risky ones, is in the guide to construction site theft.

• Closing (e.g. 18:00–22:00): the last contractors leave, gates and containers are locked. A guard at the gate checks who leaves with what, and that the site was closed properly.
• Deep night (22:00–06:00): if high-value materials or plant are on site and the fence has weak points, a static post. If the perimeter is sound and cameras have detection, remote guarding with response, or patrols.
• Saturday and Sunday daytime: the site is empty but visible from the street. Visible presence or patrols, and control of anyone permitted to enter.
• Monday opening (06:00–07:00): a joint walk-round with the site manager before the crews arrive.

The general comparison is in the guide static guarding vs mobile patrols. On a building site the answer also shifts with the phase of work: as the building closes in and valuable materials move inside, nights need more cover, not less.

• Night: every hour from 22:00 to 06:00 carries a 25% premium (Labour Code, Article 150). In the example, 7 nights × 8 hours = 56 night hours a week.
• Sunday: work on Sundays and public holidays carries a 75% premium (Article 219). In the example, all 24 Sunday hours.
• Night work limit: the normal working time of those working at night must not exceed an average of 8 hours per 24 hours over a one-week period (Article 176). That is why a site’s nights cannot rest on one person.

Price is not a reason to choose, only to reject. Ask every offer to show how many hours, how many of them night and Sunday hours, and with how many guards. If it cannot show how it pays them lawfully, reject it: something is missing — usually sleep, rest days or the guard.

A site at night has hazards an office building doesn’t: open excavations, unprotected slab edges, scaffolding, protruding rebar, unlit stairs, plant parked on a slope. The risk assessment and man-down arrangements for a lone security guard apply here with these facts in mind.

• Route: the site manager and the guard walk it together in daylight; anything dangerous at night stays off the route and is checked from a distance or by camera.
• Rule: the guard does not climb scaffolding or enter unfinished floors at night.
• Contact: at fixed intervals, with a named person at the other end and a written plan for a missed check-in.
• Suspected intruder: the guard does not approach alone; they raise the alarm, observe from a safe point and follow the escalation procedure.
• Post: lit, heated or shaded, with a toilet and charging for phone and torch.

• Where: gates, fence corners, containers and material stores, fuel tanks, plant parking, the patrol route.
• How: on a photocell or timer, so it doesn’t depend on who left last.
• With the cameras: no floodlights blinding the lens and no dark strips where a camera looks.
• Checks: every light that failed goes into the night report and is fixed before the next night.

Lighting deters, helps the guard move safely and makes the cameras useful. On a building site it moves as the work progresses, so check it at every phase change.

1. Valuable materials and equipment: what is there and where, with photos of the storage points.
2. Plant: where it is parked, that keys were not left in it, hour-meter readings and fuel levels — so Monday shows whether anything changed.
3. Authorised people: names, vehicles and times of anyone allowed in at the weekend, and no entry for anyone not on the list.
4. New hazards this week: a new excavation, a scaffold, an unprotected opening.
5. Perimeter status: gates, gaps in the fence, lights and cameras that are not working.
6. Contacts: who from the project answers at the weekend, for what, and when they are called.

On Monday before 07:00, the guard and the site manager walk the same round and compare it with Friday’s list. Anything different is recorded there and then with a photo, not when a crew discovers it at 10:00. The general logic of handing over a shift is in the guide to shift briefing and handover.

• Coverage: which guard, which hours, any gaps.
• Patrols: each checkpoint with a time — gates, containers, plant, fuel tanks.
• Alerts and incidents: what triggered, what verification showed, who acted, with photos.
• Entries: who on the list came in, when and in which vehicle; any attempt by anyone not on it.
• Site condition: lights, fence, locks, damage, weather problems.
• Open items for the site manager: what must be fixed before the next night.

The Monday report covers 61 hours and should read as a timeline, not "quiet weekend". What a shift report contains in general, and the signs of trouble, are in the guide to the security shift report. At OVIT, patrols, incidents and reports sit in the same live picture on the Guardly platform, and a real person answers on the operations desk.