OIP 1: One-Day Guard Card Certification and Fire Watch Officer Training

$75 per Officer, certified in one day

If you run a security company in Washington, you do not need to build your own academy to get a new hire licensed and useful. OIP 1 is one 8-hour day of instruction that covers the Washington pre-assignment curriculum required for a guard-card endorsement and finishes with our Fire Watch Officer training program — a credential most companies in the region cannot offer at all.

Pricing: $75 per Officer. Seats are open enrollment, and we can also run a dedicated session for your Team. To reserve seats, Contact Diligence Security or call (253) 227-3565.

OIP 1 is the first stage of the Officer Integration Program. Companies that want the deeper legal, medical, de-escalation, and documentation curriculum should look at OIP 2, which includes OIP 1 plus three additional days for $300 per Officer.

Who OIP 1 is for

OIP 1 is built for two groups: new hires at partner security companies who need a fast, legitimate guard-card path, and every new Diligence Security Officer, who completes OIP 1 on day one before ever holding a post. Candidates must be at least 18 years old for unarmed work and sponsored by a licensed company. A written exam is administered at the end of the day and an 80% score is required to pass. The exam covers the Washington State Department of Licensing's 40-question guard-card test material, with reasonable accommodations for students whose primary language is not English.

Day one: the Guard Card curriculum

The classroom portion covers the fundamentals Washington requires before an Officer stands a post: what a Security Officer is licensed to do, the difference between deterring, detecting, and reporting, guard-card application and renewal rules, age and armed-work restrictions, and the fact that a Security Officer holds the legal authority of a private citizen — we are not law enforcement. Officers also cover professional image and conduct, post orders in principle, radio and phone protocol, uniform standards, and basic observation and patrol technique.

We finish the licensing block with documentation basics: how to make a clean Security Log entry with no gaps, and how to write a short factual incident note in active voice covering who, what, when, where, why, and how. Even on day one, an Officer leaves able to produce a record a Client can read.

Fire Watch Officer training program

The second half of OIP 1 is the curriculum behind our dedicated Emergency Fire Watch Officer Team. It meets or exceeds WISHA and OSHA expectations and is grounded in NFPA and International Fire Code requirements. Officers learn why a Fire Marshal orders a manual fire watch — an impaired alarm system, an out-of-service sprinkler or suppression loop, or hazardous hot work such as welding, grinding, or cutting — and what it means to serve as the human firewall until systems are restored.

The module is genuinely technical for a single day. Officers study the fire tetrahedron (fuel, heat, oxygen, and the chemical chain reaction) and fuel classifications; how to read smoke by color, velocity, volume, and density; the 35-foot hot-work danger zone and the reflash watch that follows the work; and continuous documentation in a digital fire watch log updated every 15 to 30 minutes and shared with the Fire Marshal or Chief. They learn the P.A.S.S. method for incipient-stage fires (Pull, Aim, Squeeze, Sweep), the use and limits of AFFF, CO₂, Purple-K/PKP, and Halon systems, fire alarm control panel signals (alarm, trouble, supervisory), advanced fire behavior including flashover and backdraft, and strict evacuation and accountability procedures when a fire cannot be stopped safely.

A Fire Watch assignment is often the highest-liability post a security company will ever accept. Sending an Officer to OIP 1 means the person signing that log knows what they are looking at.

Company culture, mission, and values

Even in one day we teach who we are and what we expect of anyone wearing a badge. Diligence Security is committed to redefining the security services industry by operating to the highest ethical and environmental standards while protecting our Clients, Employees, and Communities with pride and professionalism, under a simple purpose: Lead. Serve. Protect. Our core values are Dependable, Ethical, Adaptive, and Diligent.

What comes after OIP 1

OIP 2 adds three days of criminal law, the Escalation of Force Continuum, de-escalation, medical training, CPTED, emergency response, and professional report writing — and includes OIP 1 for $300 per Officer. OIP 3 is our advanced human-skills curriculum: psychology, conversational hypnosis, face reading, personality typing, crisis intervention, and life management. See the Officer Training overview, explore Careers, or read our Frequently asked questions.