An emergency muster report is the list of everyone on site at the moment of an evacuation — employees, contractors and visitors — ideally with each person's last zone. The most reliable source is a card access control system's live "who is inside now" record: people counted at the assembly point are ticked off, and the rest go to the search team.
Its accuracy depends entirely on every entry and exit being recorded. This guide covers how to build the list, how to measure it in drills and how SmartPass produces it. Other guides on doors, cards and attendance are in our access control and attendance hub.
What really happens during an evacuation
The fire alarm sounds and everyone heads for the assembly point. Supervisors try to count their teams; some have a shift list, some don't. Then the questions start:
- "Was Ahmet on leave today, or is he still inside?"
- "Did the two maintenance engineers who came this morning leave?"
- "Where are the customer visitors from the meeting room?"
- "Is anyone left over from the night shift?"
A paper roll call can, at best, tell you who was supposed to be there. It cannot tell you who is actually inside. People on leave or sick, late arrivals, early leavers, staff who moved to another department, contractors and visitors all distort the list. When the fire service arrives, there is no solid basis for saying "everyone is out", and saying "two people are missing" may mean sending crews back into the building.
In Türkiye, the Regulation on Emergencies in Workplaces requires employers to prepare an emergency plan and, outside mining, to hold a drill at least once a year and report on its results. The drill report is meant to expose weaknesses in the plan, and how long the roll call took and how many people were initially "missing" are usually near the top of that list.
The cost of a roll call that fails
Emergencies are not rare exceptions; they are a regular part of working life:
According to Türkiye's Social Security Institution (SGK), 766,039 work accidents were recorded among workers insured under Article 4-1/a in 2025, and 1,931 workers died as a result of work accidents. (SGK Statistical Yearbook 2025, Section 3-1)
Manufacturing accounted for roughly 314,000 of those accidents, about 41% of the total, and 420 deaths (SGK Statistical Yearbook 2025). Globally, the ILO estimates that nearly 3 million workers die every year from work-related accidents and diseases (ILO, "A Call for Safer and Healthier Working Environments"). On production sites where busy shifts, contractors and visitors are present at the same time, an accurate count during an evacuation is critical. To reduce accidents in the first place, AI applications such as camera-based PPE detection are also coming into use.
A slow or wrong roll call leads to:
- Search and rescue in the wrong place. A crew goes in for someone who is actually at home, while someone still inside does not appear on the list.
- Prolonged confusion at the assembly point. Nobody can leave until the count is complete, which is a risk in itself in bad weather or at night.
- Drill reports that never improve. The same "unaccounted for" problem repeats at every drill.
- Weak records after the event. Without a record of who was where, any investigation becomes harder.
How to produce an emergency muster report: seven steps
- Record every entry and every exit. A muster report is only as good as its exit reads. A door without an exit reader produces "ghosts" who appear to be inside. For turnstile and bidirectional reader options, see our turnstile types guide.
- Prevent card sharing and tailgating. Two people on one card, or re-entry without an exit read, breaks the list. An anti-passback rule prevents most of these errors.
- Bring contractors and visitors into the same system. A paper visitor book does not feed a muster report. Give visitors time-limited QR code access and contractors a time-limited card, and they will appear on the list too.
- Produce the list by zone. "412 people on site" is not enough for a search team; they need "3 in the paint shop, 1 in Warehouse 2". That requires readers on internal doors as well. With more than one site, the list must be produced per site; we cover this set-up in our multi-site access control guide.
- Make the list available independently of the alarm. Security supervisors and the emergency team should be able to open it on a phone or tablet after the building has been vacated. What happens when the network or internet drops is covered in our article on access control offline mode.
- Standardise the roll-call method at the assembly point. Supervisors tick off their teams from the list; a dedicated reader at the assembly point is another option. The plan should name who is responsible for the count.
- Measure and improve through drills. At every drill, record the time from alarm to "last person accounted for" and the gap between the list and the count. Those two numbers are the best indicator of whether the system and the process really work.
Where the muster list comes from: three sources compared
| Source | Who it shows | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| Paper shift list | Employees scheduled to work | Leave, late arrivals, early leavers, contractors and visitors are invisible |
| Attendance system reading entries only | Employees who arrived today | Does not know who has left or which zone people are in |
| Access control reading entries, exits and internal zones | Everyone inside right now, by zone | Requires exit reads and card discipline |
The third source adds little extra workload, since employees already present their cards every day; they simply need to do so on the way out as well. The challenge is getting door placement and rules right from the start. At shift change in particular, when two shifts overlap for half an hour, a paper list becomes useless while access records still give the correct number.
Schools need the same thing even more: in an evacuation, the class teacher checks the record of the card each pupil tapped at the turnstile that morning rather than the register. Pupils who left early and parents visiting during the day also show up correctly. We describe this set-up in school and campus access control.
Fire evacuation and security lockdown are different
The two types of emergency must not be confused:
| Situation | What doors should do | Role of the muster report |
|---|---|---|
| Fire, gas leak, earthquake | Doors on escape routes must release; locks must never block evacuation | Identify anyone still inside |
| Security threat (intrusion, attack) | Doors lock to contain the threat | Know who remains in which zone |
How locks on escape routes behave when the fire alarm triggers must be settled at the design stage, in line with Türkiye's Regulation on the Protection of Buildings from Fire and fire service requirements. In larger buildings this scenario usually runs through a smart building management system (BMS): when the fire alarm triggers, ventilation shuts down, escape-route lighting comes on and the muster report goes to the emergency team at the same moment. The link between door locks and the fire panel is set out in detail in access control and fire alarm integration.
How we approach it at Digital Bridge
A muster report is a by-product of well-designed access control, so our projects start with a door map:
- Door and zone analysis. We map every entry and exit, internal zone door and escape route with you, and identify doors without exit reads and passages that would create blind spots in the muster report.
- Hardware and installation. We specify and install turnstiles, door readers and barriers under card access control, and address how door locks interact with the fire alarm during design.
- Building systems integration. Scenarios involving fire alarms, lighting and ventilation can be designed with our smart building and BMS work, and visual monitoring of assembly points and escape routes with IP camera monitoring.
- Drill support. After the first drill we review the gaps between list and count with you and adjust rules and doors accordingly. The data protection side is covered by our data protection compliance service, including KVKK, Türkiye's personal data protection law.
Muster reporting with SmartPass
Our own product, SmartPass, combines access control, time and attendance, and canteen meal counting in one system, so the muster report comes from the record people use every day rather than from separate software.
A concrete scenario: at 14:20 the alarm sounds in the paint shop. The security supervisor opens the SmartPass "who is inside now" list by zone: 11 people in the paint shop, 6 in the warehouse, 18 in the offices, including two suppliers who were given temporary visitor cards at reception that morning and three contractor technicians with cards. While supervisors count their teams at the assembly point, the security supervisor watches the names still on the list and tells the search team: "two people in the paint shop, last read at the rear door".
The SmartPass features that make this possible:
- Live monitoring and a "who is inside now" list by zone. With a zone hierarchy (gatehouse, production, warehouse, office…) the list is shown zone by zone rather than for the whole site.
- Door, attendance and canteen in one read. Because employees already present their cards every day, the list stays current without any extra step, and no separate attendance device is needed.
- Visitors and contractors in the same record. Visitors receive a temporary card at entry and contractors are registered with a validity period; both are read on the same terminals as staff cards, so they are counted among the people inside as well.
- One-action lockdown. In a security threat, all doors can be locked in a single action.
- Audit trail and data protection. Records are kept with an audit trail, card numbers are never stored in plain text, and records past their retention period are anonymised.
Next step
Note how long the roll call took at your last drill and how many people were initially unaccounted for, and list the doors on your site without exit reads. With those two pieces of information, get in touch: we'll close the blind spots together and show SmartPass producing a muster report for your own zones. For the zone logic behind it, read zone-based access in factories.