Cleaners, engineers, deliveries, the alarm company. Between four in the morning and four in the afternoon your empty premises are used by people you have never met, on arrangements nobody wrote down.

Your building is occupied for about eight hours a night. For the other sixteen it is empty, unlit, and full of stock, equipment and the previous evening's takings.

It is also not actually empty. A cleaner comes at six. A delivery arrives at eleven. Twice a year an engineer services something you could not name. None of those people have ever met you, and every one of them has a way in.

The list nobody has ever written

Ask an operator who can get into their building and the first answer is a number. The real list is longer than the number, every time.

The people you employ

⇒ Managers, senior staff, whoever opens. ⭕ This part is usually accurate, and it is also the smallest part of the list.

The people you pay but do not employ

⚠️ Cleaners, the security company, the people who empty the bins, whoever maintains the cellar. These are arrangements, not relationships, and they change staff without telling you.

⇒ The Bins Behind The Building

The people who come twice a year

⇒ Extraction, refrigeration, the fire system, the alarm. ⚠️ You will not recognise them, and neither will whoever lets them in.

⇒ The Maintenance You Only Do When It Breaks

And the people who used to be on the list

⭕ Former staff, a previous contractor, the person who held keys during a refit two years ago. Nobody was ever told to take them off, because there is no list to take them off.

⇒ The Keys You Cannot Account For

Why it drifts, in four steps that all look reasonable

Nobody decides to lose control of building access. It happens by increments, each of which was sensible at the time.

A key is lent for one morning

⇒ A delivery is coming and nobody can be there. ⭕ It is the right call that day and the key does not come back that day either.

The code is shared so somebody can get in

⚠️ Over a phone, in a message, to somebody covering for somebody. A code that has been said out loud is a code that is now public, and there is no way to know how far.

The contractor sends a different person

⇒ Same company, different van, different name. ⭕ You have a relationship with a business and an arrangement with a stranger, and only the first one is written down.

And the arrangement outlives the reason

⚠️ The refit finished. The trial period ended. The supplier changed. ⭕ The access carries on, because removing it requires somebody to remember it exists.

What can actually go wrong

Worth being specific, because the vague version of this subject gets ignored.

Stock leaves in daylight

⚠️ Not at three in the morning with a broken window — at ten on a Tuesday, by somebody with a key, in a vehicle that belongs there. This is the common version and it does not look like a break-in.

⇒ The Stock You Never Count

Something is damaged and nobody says

⇒ A contractor moves a fitting, marks a floor, leaves a door on the latch. ⭕ You find it that evening with no idea when it happened or who was in.

An accident happens with nobody there

⛔ ⚠️ Somebody working alone in your premises is a health and safety question with a specific answer in your jurisdiction. Ask, get it in writing, and check what your own arrangements actually require of you.

⇒ The Insurance You Have Never Read

And the insurance question arrives afterwards

⛔ Whether a loss is covered often turns on how entry was gained and whether access was controlled. ⚠️ This is a question for your insurer and your broker, asked before you need the answer rather than after.

The four things worth knowing about each person

This is the whole administrative burden, and it is four columns.

Who they are, as a person

⇒ Not "the cleaning company". ⭕ A name, because the company sends different people and the name is what a camera recording will need to be matched against.

How they get in

⚠️ Key, code, fob, or "somebody lets them in". ⭕ The fourth answer is the safest one and the one that gets abandoned first when it becomes inconvenient.

When they are expected

⇒ A regular window, or on call. ⭕ Somebody in the building outside their window is the single most useful alert you can have, and it costs nothing to define.

⇒ The Delivery Window Nobody Set

And when that stops being true

⚠️ An end date, even a provisional one. Access with no end date is the mechanism by which the list grows and never shrinks.

The morning shift you never see

The cleaner is the most consistent visitor to your premises and usually the least considered.

They see the state of the room before anybody tidies the story

⭕ Damage, breakage, what was left, what the night was actually like. This is the most accurate report of last night available to you and almost nobody collects it.

⇒ The Cleaning Nobody Sees

They notice what changed

⇒ A door that was open, a light that was left, something not where it lives. ⚠️ They will not tell you unless there is a way to tell you that takes ten seconds.

They are alone in a building full of stock

⚠️ ⭕ This is a trust arrangement carrying real value, made with somebody you may never have met, often through an agency, often changing.

And two lines from them would be worth more than the cameras

⭕ A phone message on a bad morning, nothing on an ordinary one. The cost is zero and the information is better than footage nobody reviews.

⇒ The Cameras Nobody Watches

The afternoon that fixes it

This is genuinely an afternoon, once, and then twenty minutes a quarter.

One: list every person who can get in

⇒ ⭕ Every route, including the ones that are not keys — codes, fobs, the door that does not lock properly, whoever the alarm company can send.

Two: put a name against each

⚠️ Companies do not enter buildings. People do, and the name is the part that matters when something needs explaining.

Three: give each one an end date

⭕ Even an arbitrary one. A date forces a decision later, which is the only thing that ever shrinks a list like this.

Four: decide what happens when somebody leaves

⇒ The last day is the moment, not a week afterwards. ⚠️ Write down what has to be collected or changed so it is not a memory exercise on a busy day.

Five: keep it where the other operating records are

⇒ The Report You Open Every Monday

The three moments it has to be reviewed

Between quarterly checks there are exactly three events that require immediate action.

Somebody with access leaves

⚠️ ⭕ On the day, not at the end of the month. This is the single highest-value habit on the page and the one most often deferred.

A contractor is changed

⇒ Ending an arrangement and removing the access are two different actions, and only the first one has a meeting about it. The second one is nobody's job.

And a code has been shared

⭕ Once it has been said out loud, it is not a code any more. ⚠️ Changing it is a five-minute task that people postpone indefinitely because nothing has visibly gone wrong.

What good looks like

The name test

Ask who was in your building yesterday morning. ⇒ A name and a time means this is managed. "The cleaner, probably" means it is not.

The leaver test

Ask what happened to the access of the last person who left. ⚠️ A specific answer means the habit exists. A pause means the list has been growing for years.

The window test

Working     — somebody in the building outside their window gets noticed
Not working — you would find out that evening, or not at all

Three to hold

1  The real list is longer than the number of keys, every time
2  Stock leaves in daylight, with a key, in a vehicle that belongs there
3  Access with no end date is how the list grows and never shrinks

Where the record has to sit

Who can enter, by what route, when they are expected and until when — one page with the other operating records rather than in the memory of whoever has been there longest. Kept there, a leaver takes five minutes and a quarterly review takes twenty. Kept nowhere, the honest answer to "who can get into your building" is a number that was true some time ago, and the difference between that number and the real one is the whole exposure.