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How do I know the position is covered without going to look?

The position is set up, and nobody is behind it

It is 04:10 in the substation control room. The mimic panels are still alive: six screens lit between the desk and the wall board, lines moving, one curve climbing slowly. The radio sits in its charger and a pen rests on the logbook, open at tonight’s page. The chair has been empty for twenty-six minutes. Everything runs exactly as it would if someone were sitting in it.

18 cameras across 10 sectors

This is how you ask for it

«“Alert me if the control room position is left empty for more than fifteen minutes during the hours it must be staffed.”»

As long as nothing happens, nothing happens. The problem is the night something does go off and the post has been empty for half an hour: the switching is done late, nobody picks up the call and the log gets written afterwards, from memory. The next day the question is not what failed, it is who was there. And there is no answer: a sheet signed at the end of the shift and a video nobody has watched.

You decide once

You decide which positions count and when: the control room from ten at night to six in the morning, the reception desk while people are waiting in front of it, the cash desk on the afternoon shift. You decide the minutes of slack — nobody is glued to a chair — and who gets told. You say it once, and IRIS applies it every night, over Christmas too, and on the day the roster changes.

An empty position makes no noise. The screen stays lit, the phone stays in its place and from outside everything looks the same. That is why the only way to know whether someone is sitting there is to call or walk up and look, and both happen once something already feels off, not before. The same thing happens at a counter: the position is fully set up, screen on, papers laid out, and nobody is behind it while five people stand waiting.

IRIS watches the area you marked — that chair, that stretch of counter, that console — and checks one thing: whether someone is there. Once it has been empty longer than you said, within the hours you said, the alert goes out with the camera, the time and the video. It does not measure how well anyone works. It measures whether the post is covered, which is a different thing, and it is the thing you will be asked about.

The other thing it leaves behind is a record. Not a score, not a percentage: the hours that position was staffed and the hours it was not, without anyone signing a sheet at the end of the shift. It is useful with the owner, with the insurer or with whoever audits you, and above all it stops the arguments from memory. Video stops being a tape and becomes something you can consult.

What changes

Before, you found out at the shift change, or when a call went unanswered. Checking meant a phone call at four in the morning, which lands badly when the person was in fact there. Now the alert comes on its own once the post has been empty longer than agreed, with the camera in front of you, and whoever is in charge decides: call, send someone, or do nothing because they already know that person is pulling someone off a fault tonight.

Where we have seen it

  • International arrivals, nearly eleven at night. The passport control snake is full across all four of its runs and the queue disappears down the far corridor: six hundred and twenty people. Of the fourteen booths, seven have somebody behind the glass; the other seven are dark. On the left, a wide empty corridor with room for another whole queue. IRIS measures how many minutes the wait is, how many people are inside the queue and how many booths are open while they wait. And nothing else: it looks at no document, at no face, and it does not know who anybody is.

    CAM-584Fifty-two minutes of queue and seven booths switched off

    «Tell me if the control wait goes over forty minutes and there are booths still closed.»

    See this camera →Airports

  • Mid-morning in the branch. Five people stand behind the cord and a single member of staff is serving at the counter. In the foreground, an advisory desk set up and ready — screen on, papers laid out, chair free — has had nobody at it for a good while. IRIS sees both things at once: the line that is not going down and the desk that is ready and empty.

    CAM-511Five people waiting and a desk set up with nobody at it

    «Tell me when more than three people are waiting and a desk has been set up and empty for over fifteen minutes.»

    See this camera →Banking

  • Saturday, small hours, on the main floor. Seven people are seated around the centre table and another nine stand behind them, playing or watching: there is not a free chair. Five metres away, an open table with its dealer has gone three quarters of an hour without a single player, its whole ring of chairs empty. IRIS counts how many are seated, how many are standing around and how many open tables have nobody at all. Both ends of demand fit in the same frame, and until now nobody measured them.

    CAM-523A full table and an open one with nobody, five metres away

    «Tell me when an open table has gone half an hour without players while people stand waiting at another one.»

    See this camera →Casinos

  • Mid-morning in the tank farm. The horizontal tank has its manway open, the cover swung back and the hole in plain sight. A wet trail runs down the shell to the valve below, which is dripping onto the concrete inside the bund. Nobody is inside the enclosure: the only two operators are far away, at the other end of the yard, talking. IRIS sees the open cover, sees the drip and sees that nobody is there, and times it from the moment it was opened.

    CAM-309The manway has been open for half an hour and nobody is there

    «Tell me if a manway or a valve is left open for more than twenty minutes with nobody in front of it.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • A hospital lobby mid-morning, sun coming through the window wall. In the middle, the curved reception counter: monitors on, phones in place, folders on the worktop and both chairs empty. In front of it, three people stand waiting, looking at the desk; on the right, a professional in a white coat is waiting too. In the seating area by the window there is a single person sitting. IRIS does not look at who is missing: it looks at whether the area behind the counter has anyone attending it.

    CAM-126Nobody behind the reception desk

    «Tell me if the reception desk has nobody behind it for longer than we agreed, and above all if there are people waiting in front of it.»

    See this camera →The hospital

  • Peak check-in hour, and the desk is open at one end only. Two thirds of it have nobody behind them: empty chairs and a monitor left on. The head of the queue bunches up at the single staffed position, and the line stretches across the whole lobby to the staircase. On the sofas, more people are waiting sitting down. There are not too many guests: there is too little desk.

    CAM-497Nineteen people waiting and a single desk open

    «Tell me if more than ten people are waiting at reception and fewer than two desks are staffed.»

    See this camera →Hotels

  • Mid-morning on the tank roof. The hatch is open: the round cover is tipped up to one side and the hole shows black from above. Inside the yellow roof railing there is nobody. Down below, a worker in a yellow helmet has his back turned, busy with something else, and another crosses in the distance. The tank ladder is clear. IRIS sees that this cover has been open for a good while and that no work is going on up there.

    CAM-324The tank hatch is open and nobody is up there

    «Tell me if a tank hatch has been open for more than ten minutes with nobody working up there.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • An internal control post in mid-afternoon. On the counter, two monitors each split into four camera feeds, the intercom console, the radios in their charger, a logbook with a pen on it and a set of keys. Through the long window you can see the cell landing and the stairs at the far end. On the right-hand wall, the numbered key cabinet and the door-release panel. The chair is turned away and empty: there is nobody in front of the screens.

    CAM-114The control post with nobody at it

    «Tell me if the control post is left with nobody at it for longer than we have set, and tell me which camera and what time.»

    See this camera →The prison

  • Ten past ten in the morning in the control room of the drinking water plant. The screens along the curved desk are still on, schematics and curves moving, and the cabinet on the left has its indicator lights alive. The chair is empty, turned towards the desk. Through the windows you can see the settling tanks. On the cabinet to the right sits a hard hat. The room is working; there is nobody at the desk.

    CAM-419The system is still running and there is nobody at the desk

    «Tell me if the control room desk is left with nobody for more than fifteen minutes inside the hours it has to be attended.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • Four in the morning in the substation control room. The mimic displays are still alive: six screens on across the desk and the wall behind, lines and curves moving. Both chairs are empty and turned towards the desk. On the cabinet to the right there is a hard hat and some paperwork. Through the window you can see the transformer. The room is working; the desk is not.

    CAM-358The control desk has been unattended for twenty minutes

    «Tell me if between ten at night and six in the morning the control room desk is left with nobody for more than fifteen minutes.»

    See this camera →Industry

What it does not do

IRIS does not know who is in that chair: it identifies nobody and recognises no faces. It also does not know whether the person went down for some switching, stepped into the toilet or walked out to a real fault. It only says the post has been empty for twenty-six minutes within the hours you set. And if someone works outside the frame, for IRIS they are not there: the area is agreed beforehand.

Questions

Is this for monitoring employees?
No. IRIS identifies nobody, recognises no faces and rates no individual. What it looks at is whether a specific position is covered during specific hours, which is an operating condition, not anyone’s score. The alert says “this post has been empty for twenty-six minutes”, not who was meant to be in it. How that gets used afterwards is up to your organisation, and it is worth agreeing it with the people who work there before switching anything on.
What if the person is working, but out of frame?
Then, as far as IRIS is concerned, they are not there. That is why the area is drawn beforehand and talked through beforehand: if the real job includes walking to the cabinet at the back or the console next door, that part goes into the area, or the tolerance in minutes goes up. It is a five-minute adjustment made looking at the camera together with the people who work there, and it prevents the silly alert that makes everyone distrust the system in week one.
Can I show afterwards that the post was covered?
Yes. You keep a record of the hours that position was staffed and the hours it was not, with the camera and the video of every gap. It is not a signature at the end of the shift written from memory: it is what was seen, when it was seen. It works for an audit, for a claim, or for the awkward conversation the next morning — and it works just as well when the answer is that the post was covered all night.
Does it work in a control room with no internet connection?
Yes. IRIS can be deployed entirely on site and run with no internet connection: video, rules and searches stay inside the customer’s own infrastructure. For a substation, a water plant or any site that cannot let images leave the perimeter, that is the normal setup, not the exception. Unplug the cable and the four-in-the-morning alert still goes out.

See all the questions

See it for yourself

No extra alarms here. Just what needs looking at.

Not a recorded video, not an explanatory drawing: a summary of the real screen, with a different case every time it starts. There is a lot more behind it.

  1. You draw the line
  2. It counts by itself
  3. A number comes out
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