What is a Pitman schedule and how does it work

The 14-day cycle, day by day

Written out from a Monday start, one team's fortnight looks like this. Week one: work Monday and Tuesday, off Wednesday and Thursday, work Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Week two is the mirror image: off Monday and Tuesday, work Wednesday and Thursday, off Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Then it repeats. The pattern is often written 2-2-3, and the three-day weekend off every second week is its best-known feature.

Four teams keep a post covered around the clock. Wikipedia's article on shift plans describes the most common form as four teams on 12-hour shifts with two paired together, one working days and one working nights while the other two are off, and then the reverse. At any moment one team is on days, one is on nights and two are off.

The hours alternate by week. Four 12-hour shifts make a 48-hour week and three make a 36-hour week, so the fortnight totals 84 hours and averages 42 hours a week. ShiftScheduleUp's Pitman guide gives the same figures.

Pitman, 2-2-3 and Panama: one pattern, several names

The names are used loosely. Wikipedia treats 2-2-3 and the Panama schedule as the same pattern and notes that it is not uncommon for teams to rotate between days and nights, most often spending six months on each. ShiftScheduleUp uses Pitman for a version in which teams stay on days or on nights for longer blocks, and 2-2-3 for one that switches more often within the cycle. Your department's roster is the only definition that matters, so take the start date and team letter from it rather than from a generic chart.

It is also easy to mix up the Pitman with the DuPont schedule, another rotation of 12-hour shifts for four crews. According to Wikipedia, the DuPont runs over four weeks, averages 42 hours a week and includes a full week off, but it also contains a 72-hour work week.

How common 12-hour shifts are in US policing

For a report to the National Institute of Justice, the Police Foundation surveyed the same 300 randomly selected local police departments, each with 50 or more sworn officers, in 2005 and again in 2009. The share using 8-hour patrol shifts fell from 40 percent to 29 percent over those four years. Ten-hour shifts went from 27 to 22 percent, and 12-hour shifts rose slightly, from 24 to 26 percent.

The same survey found a sharp drop in rotating shifts, where officers routinely move between day, evening and midnight work: from 46 percent of agencies to 25 percent. Fixed shifts rose from 54 to 75 percent. The authors suggest the change may reflect research linking shift rotation to disrupted circadian cycles, fatigue and other health problems.

What the research says about 12-hour shifts and fatigue

The largest controlled study on the question is the Police Foundation's shift length experiment, funded by the National Institute of Justice. Between 2007 and 2009, 326 volunteer officers in Detroit, Michigan and Arlington, Texas were randomly assigned to five 8-hour days, four 10-hour days or three 12-hour days a week.

It found no significant differences between the three shift lengths in work performance, health or work-family conflict. Officers on 12-hour shifts reported more sleepiness and lower alertness at work than officers on 8-hour shifts. Officers on 10-hour shifts slept the most, an adjusted average of 7.86 hours per 24-hour period against 7.27 hours on 8-hour shifts, and officers on 8-hour shifts worked significantly more overtime.

The authors advise caution with 12-hour shifts because of those fatigue findings, and note that people tend to underestimate how tired they are. On a Pitman rotation, the three-shift stretch is the longest run of work in the cycle, so it helps to know where it falls before overtime or a court date gets added around it.

Hours, work periods and overtime

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, public agencies can use a special work period for law enforcement officers and firefighters. The US Department of Labor explains that this section 7(k) work period can run from 7 to 28 consecutive days, and that overtime is owed to law enforcement employees after 171 hours in a 28-day period, or 86 hours in a 14-day period. For fire protection employees the figures are 212 and 106 hours.

A Pitman fortnight is 84 scheduled hours before any overtime, training or court time. How that turns into pay depends on the work period your agency uses and on your contract, not on the pattern alone.

This section is general information, not legal or pay advice. Your payroll office or union representative can tell you how your agency applies these rules.

Common mistakes when putting a Pitman rotation on a calendar

Anchoring the cycle on the wrong day. A 14-day pattern started one week off puts every shift of the year on the wrong date. Anchor it to a day you know was the first day of your team's two-day block.

Forgetting that nights cross midnight. A night shift that starts Thursday evening ends Friday morning. On paper Friday may look free, but a morning appointment or court date that day comes straight after a full night of work.

Rebuilding the calendar for every trade. Traded shifts, training days and overtime change single days, not the pattern. Recording them as one-off changes keeps the rest of the year intact.

DutyWheel is built around those three points. You pick Pitman from its pattern list, mark the day your cycle started and choose the row that matches your team, and the year fills in. Edited days sit on top of the pattern and can be reverted, and DutyWheel flags a court appearance logged for the morning after a night shift, showing the hours between the end of the shift and the appearance.

Frequently asked questions