Guards for the hours your pool is actually open.
Not a standard block of cover sold by the hour. We work out the schedule from your gate counts and your sight lines, and the number of chairs comes out of that rather than out of a table.
A guarded day, start to close
Before open
The water gets tested before anybody is in it
Chlorine, pH and clarity, written down before the gate is unlocked. A reading that is out of range closes the pool, and the guard on shift has the authority to do that without ringing anybody first.
Open
Chairs go up in the order that covers the deep end first
Positions are fixed to the pool, not to the guard. Every chair has a zone that overlaps its neighbour, so no part of the water belongs to nobody.
Every rotation
Guards move on a timer, not when they feel like it
Scanning degrades fast, and it degrades without the guard noticing, which is the whole reason for the timer. Rotation is a handover: the guard leaving tells the guard arriving what is going on in that zone.
Through the day
Somebody who is not on a chair is watching the chairs
A site lead covers the breaks, deals with the parent who wants to argue about the swim test, and takes the phone call so a guard never has to look away.
Unannounced
Audits happen on ordinary afternoons
Somebody arrives without warning, drops an object in the deep end, and times the response. A drill everybody knew about tests nothing.
Close
The deck is cleared and the log is filed
Counts, incidents, anything a swimmer complained about, and the closing water test. It reaches your manager the same evening.
Timings, rotation lengths and staffing counts are set per pool. Nothing on this page is a published schedule.
What a staffing agreement carries
- Certification
- Rescue, first aid, CPR and AED, from our own course. We teach it, so we know what the certificate is worth.
- Cover for absence
- Call-outs are ours to solve. A guard who cannot make a shift rings us, not you, and the replacement is on the schedule before the pool opens.
- Supervision
- A named site lead per pool and a manager above them who visits unannounced.
- Equipment
- Tubes, backboard, spineboard straps, oxygen where the facility requires it, and a first aid kit that gets restocked rather than topped up.
- Records
- Certifications, in-service hours and audit results kept in a form that survives an inspection.
- Insurance
- Carried by us and evidenced to your board before the season starts, not after it.
- What we do not do
- Guards are not cleaners, gate staff or party hosts. If the pool needs those too, they are separate people on the schedule and separate lines on the quote.
How the number of guards is worked out
Two things decide it, and neither is the size of the pool on the drawing. The first is sight line: stand at each chair position and find the parts of the floor you cannot see. Steps, a slide run-out and anything under a shade sail are the usual offenders. The second is load: a pool with a hundred people in it on a Saturday needs a different answer from the same pool with twelve.
We walk the deck and give you the number, along with what would have to change for it to be lower. Sometimes it is a chair position. Sometimes it is a shade sail nobody thought about.
Next step
An hour on your deck, no charge, and a written number afterwards.