On a Pitman schedule, also called 2-2-3, four squads work 12-hour shifts in a 14-day cycle of two days on, two off, three on, two off, two on and three off. Each officer works 7 shifts and 84 hours in every 14 days, which is an average of 42 hours a week, and because two squads cover the day shift and two the night shift, one squad is on duty for every shift of every day.
How does a Pitman rotation run, day by day?
Take the two day-shift squads, A and B, on a cycle that starts on a Monday, where B works on the days A is off and A works on the days B is off.
- Days 1 and 2, Monday and Tuesday: A works.
- Days 3 and 4, Wednesday and Thursday: B works.
- Days 5 to 7, Friday to Sunday: A works.
- Days 8 and 9, Monday and Tuesday: B works.
- Days 10 and 11, Wednesday and Thursday: A works.
- Days 12 to 14, Friday to Sunday: B works.
Squads C and D run the same pattern on nights, which means every squad works 7 shifts in the 14 days, never more than three in a row, and has Friday, Saturday and Sunday off every other weekend.
How many hours does each 12-hour rotation put in a pay period?
Pitman, 4 on 4 off and DuPont all average 42 hours a week on 12-hour shifts, and 24/48 averages 56, but they differ in how the hours fall in a 14-day pay period.
- Pitman, 2-2-3: 84 hours in every 14 days, and how the 84 split between the two weeks depends on the day the work week starts (60 and 24 with a Monday start, 36 and 48 with a Wednesday start).
- 4 on, 4 off: an 8-day cycle of four 12-hour shifts and four days off, again with four squads, so a 14-day pay period holds 6, 7 or 8 shifts (72, 84 or 96 hours) depending on where it falls in the cycle.
- DuPont: a 28-day cycle for four crews, each working 4 nights, then 3 off, 3 days, 1 off, 3 nights, 3 off, 4 days and 7 off, which comes to 14 shifts and 168 hours in 28 days, with 7 days off in a row once a cycle.
- 24/48: three platoons, A, B and C, each working a 24-hour shift and then off for 48 hours, so each firefighter averages 56 hours a week and a 14-day period holds 4 or 5 shifts (96 or 120 hours).
When does federal overtime law come into it?
Under section 7(k) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, police and fire departments may count overtime over a work period of 7 to 28 days instead of a week. The Department of Labor’s Fact Sheet #8 gives the federal thresholds for a 14-day work period: overtime is due after 86 hours for law enforcement and after 106 hours for fire protection.
That means a Pitman officer’s 84 hours sit 2 under the first number, while a 24/48 firefighter’s 120-hour fortnights sit 14 over the second. Which employees qualify, which work period your agency has adopted and what your labor contract pays are questions for your HR office and your attorney.
What happens to minimum staffing when one officer calls in sick?
Every shift has a minimum, which is the fewest people the agency will put on duty. Say day squad A has eight officers and the minimum for a day shift is six: one sick call leaves seven, a second leaves six, and a third leaves the shift short.
On a Pitman schedule, squad B is off on every day that A works, so B’s officers are the first people to ask for the open shift, and the same holds at night for C and D. What takes the time is asking them in seniority order and keeping count of who has worked how much overtime.
How does Pace Scheduler fill the open shift?
Pace Scheduler is the scheduling software we write and support at Pace Systems in Naperville. The agency sets its staffing levels, the counts update as the schedule changes and requests are approved, and a request for time off that would leave a shift short gets a warning before anyone approves it, according to its feature list.
When a shift does fall short, the supervisor posts it as overtime from the schedule and a Message Blast tells the department by email or text. The requests come back grouped in seniority order, each with the overtime hours that person has already worked and the date of their last overtime shift, and the supervisor approves one and rejects the rest.
Rich Evans of the Eagan Police Department in Minnesota wrote about the Message Blast on pacescheduler.com:
“No longer did a sergeant have to call 25 officers to fill a shift. They just sent a blast and checked back at a pre-determined deadline to approve the overtime request.”
Rotations only go in once, because the software takes an on/off pattern such as Pitman, assigns it to each person and fills in that person’s schedule for the whole year, with time off and assignments added. Assistant Fire Chief Corey M. Hojek of the Evergreen Park Fire Department in Illinois wrote:
“We manage over 100 people with complicated scheduling rules where we need to build a fresh schedule every month. I’m now able to auto-generate a schedule that manages seniority, max shifts, and minimum staffing that saves me personally over 15 hours a month.”
Police departments, sheriff’s offices, campus safety, dispatch, corrections and fire departments use Pace Scheduler across the US and Canada, and officers make their requests from its app on iPhone or Android. It’s part of the Pace Municipal Suite, which has more than 650 municipal clients and a 98% renewal rate. For a new agency, our team builds the site with the agency’s real data, as close as we can to the schedules it runs today, and then trains the administrators, the supervisors and everyone else, in that order.
If you’d like to see it, we give a free online demonstration: call Pace Scheduler at 630-359-8899 or ask on pacescheduler.com. Pace Scheduler, police, fire and dispatch scheduling describes the rest of what it does.
Questions
How many hours a week is a Pitman schedule?
It averages 42 hours a week, because each officer works seven 12-hour shifts, 84 hours, in every 14 days. How those hours split between the two weeks depends on the day the work week starts.
How many squads does a Pitman schedule need?
A Pitman schedule needs four squads, since two cover days and two cover nights, and each pair alternates so that one squad is on duty for every shift of every day.
What is the difference between Pitman and 4 on, 4 off?
Both use 12-hour shifts and four squads, and both average 42 hours a week. The difference is that Pitman runs a 14-day cycle and always puts 84 hours in a 14-day pay period, while 4 on, 4 off runs an 8-day cycle, so a 14-day pay period can hold 72, 84 or 96 hours.
Can Pace Scheduler run a Pitman rotation?
Yes, it builds rotations from on/off patterns, so a 2-2-3 pattern is assigned to each person once and fills that person’s schedule for the year, and minimum staffing, overtime and time-off requests then work against that schedule.