24/7 Shift Patterns: 2-2-3, DuPont, Pitman & 4-on-4-off

Every 24/7 operation eventually hits the same wall: seven days times twenty-four hours is 168 hours of coverage a week, and no legal full-time job comes anywhere near that. The answer is a shift pattern — a repeating rotation that shares those 168 hours across teams. But search for one and you fall into a maze of code names: 2-2-3, Panama, Pitman, 4-on-4-off, DuPont, Continental. Almost every guide out there explains exactly one of them. This one puts the major patterns side by side, with the math, the tables and the law.

In short: a 24/7 shift pattern is a repeating rotation that keeps a post staffed 168 hours a week. Because 168 ÷ 4 teams = 42 hours per team per week, the classic continuous patterns — 2-2-3 (Panama), Pitman, 4-on-4-off and DuPont — all use four teams on 12-hour shifts and average exactly 42 hours per week.

Below you will find the arithmetic of continuous coverage, a quick staffing calculator, a copyable 2-2-3 rotation table, a full 28-day DuPont schedule example, the annual-hours math behind 4-on-4-off, an industry comparison, and what US, UK and EU law actually requires between shifts. A free Excel template with all four patterns is linked on this page if you want to put one straight to work.

How does 24/7 coverage staffing math work?

Start with the one number that never changes: a post that must be staffed around the clock consumes 24 × 7 = 168 labour-hours per week, before breaks, holidays or sickness. A shift pattern is nothing more than a way of dividing 168 by a number of teams (also called crews or squads). Two decisions define every pattern: shift length — three 8-hour shifts per day or two 12-hour shifts — and how many teams share the wheel. Divide 168 by the team count and you get the average working week each team must carry.

• 3 teams: 168 ÷ 3 = 56 hours per week on average — above the EU and UK 48-hour cap and a proven burnout machine. Avoid for true 24/7 coverage.
• 4 teams: 168 ÷ 4 = 42 hours per week — the standard for 12-hour continuous patterns. 2-2-3, Pitman, 4-on-4-off and DuPont all average exactly 42.
• 5 teams: 168 ÷ 5 = 33.6 hours per week — common in 8-hour rotations and under sub-40-hour collective agreements; the built-in slack absorbs training and absence.

The same division sets your headcount. Every seat that must be occupied 24/7 needs at least four employees at 42 hours each — and that assumes zero vacation, sickness or training. Real operations add 10 to 20 percent relief cover, so plan roughly 4.4 to 4.8 people per continuous post. A security site with six simultaneous posts therefore needs 24 officers on paper and 27 to 29 in practice. If a pattern proposal implies fewer than four people per post, the missing hours will silently reappear as overtime.

Quick staffing calculator for 24/7 posts

Use this table as a calculator: find the number of posts that must be staffed around the clock, then read across. The minimum assumes a four-team, 42-hour pattern with nobody ever absent; the relief columns round up to whole people.

For a different contract length, divide the weekly coverage hours by the average week you want each person to carry: at 36 hours, a single 24/7 post needs 168 ÷ 36 = 4.7 people before relief; at 33.6 hours — the five-team model — exactly five.

What is the 2-2-3 or Panama shift schedule?

The 2-2-3 — widely known as the Panama schedule — is the most popular 12-hour pattern in the United States. Four teams work 12-hour shifts in a repeating sequence: 2 on, 2 off, 3 on, 2 off, 2 on, 3 off. That sequence takes 14 days; because two teams cover days while two cover nights and the pairs swap halfway, the full cycle is 28 days. Each team works 14 twelve-hour shifts per cycle: 14 × 12 = 168 hours in 4 weeks, an average of exactly 42 hours per week. Nobody ever works more than three days in a row, and every other weekend is a full three-day weekend, Friday through Sunday off.

How to read it: D is the 12-hour day shift (for example 07:00 to 19:00), N the night shift (19:00 to 07:00), a dash is a day off. Teams A and B cover days, C and D cover nights; in weeks 3 and 4 the pairs swap roles, completing the 28-day cycle. Note the built-in fairness: Team B is off Friday to Sunday in week one, Team A in week two. In the fixed variant the day-night swap never happens — that version has its own name, Pitman, covered below.

The 2-2-3's appeal is rhythm: short runs, frequent recovery, and a predictable long weekend twice a month — which is why 911 dispatch centres, police departments and hospital units lean on it. The trade-off is the 12-hour day itself, plus the fortnightly day-night flip in the rotating version, which sleep researchers generally consider too fast for full circadian adjustment. Teams that feel that strain usually move to the fixed Pitman variant rather than abandoning the sequence.

How does the 4-on-4-off shift pattern work?

4-on-4-off is exactly what it says: four consecutive 12-hour shifts, then four full days off, on an endless 8-day wheel. Four teams cover the wheel, typically two on days and two on nights, either fixed or switching after each block. The annual math is the cleanest of any pattern: 365 days ÷ 8-day cycle = 45.6 cycles per year, times four 12-hour shifts per cycle, equals 2,190 rostered hours per year — an average of 42 hours per week, the same total as every four-team pattern, just packaged in longer blocks.

Because the 8-day cycle does not divide into the 7-day week, the pattern drifts through the calendar: over the 56-day super-cycle the four-day off block starts on each weekday exactly once, and only three of every eight weekends are fully off. That drift is the price of the pattern's biggest asset — a guaranteed four-day recovery block after every block of work. Fatigue research on 12-hour systems consistently flags the fourth consecutive shift, and especially the fourth consecutive night, as the risk peak; many UK operators soften it by splitting the block into two day shifts followed by two night shifts.

Here is the basic 8-day wheel with fixed day and night teams. D is a 12-hour day shift (for example 07:00 to 19:00), N a 12-hour night shift (19:00 to 07:00), a dash is a day off. On every day exactly one team is on days and one on nights; on day 9 every team starts again from day 1.

4-on-4-off shift pattern template (Excel)

The free 24/7 template linked on this page has a 4-on-4-off sheet built on this wheel: enter your start date and team names, and it lays the rotation over real calendar dates so you can see which weekends each team gets before you announce the pattern.

How do the DuPont and Pitman schedules work?

DuPont: a full week off every month, at a price

The DuPont schedule, developed at the chemical company of the same name in the 1950s, runs each team through a 28-day cycle: 4 night shifts, 3 off, 3 day shifts, 1 off, 3 night shifts, 3 off, 4 day shifts — then 7 consecutive days off. That is again 14 twelve-hour shifts per 28 days, so again a 42-hour weekly average. Its signature attraction is the free week every single month without touching annual leave. The cost is concentration: one calendar week of each cycle packs roughly 72 working hours, and the cycle keeps alternating blocks of days and nights, which makes DuPont the most fatigue-sensitive of the classic four-team patterns.

DuPont schedule example: a copyable 28-day rotation

Here is a complete DuPont work schedule for four teams. Each row is one team; each cell block is one calendar week, Monday to Sunday. D is a 12-hour day shift (for example 07:00 to 19:00), N a 12-hour night shift (19:00 to 07:00), a dash is a day off. Every team runs the identical sequence, each starting one week later than the team above it.

Read the table by columns and you can check the coverage yourself: on every single day of the 28-day cycle exactly one team is on days and one is on nights, while the other two rest. A night block ends at 07:00 on the first day of the following rest block, which is why three rest days after four nights feel more like two and a half. After day 28 each team simply returns to its week 1 line.

The week-by-week hours explain both the appeal and the risk. Team A works 48 hours in week 1 (four nights), 72 hours in week 2 (three days plus three nights), 48 hours in week 3 (four days) and zero in week 4 — 168 hours in 28 days, the familiar 42-hour average. That uneven profile has real consequences:

In the UK and EU the 72-hour week is lawful because the 48-hour limit is an average: the Working Time Regulations measure it over a 17-week reference period by default, and Directive 2003/88/EC allows up to four months. In the US the picture is different. FLSA overtime is calculated workweek by workweek and cannot be averaged, so with a Monday-to-Sunday workweek each team clocks 8 + 32 + 8 = 48 overtime hours every 28 days on DuPont. Public-sector police and fire departments can use the Section 7(k) exemption instead, which allows work periods of up to 28 days: 168 hours per cycle stays under the 171-hour overtime threshold for law enforcement and the 212-hour threshold for firefighters.

If you like DuPont's seven-day break but not its 72-hour week, adjust the sequence rather than the idea: some sites put the block of days before the block of nights, others move the single rest day so it separates the heaviest stretch. Whatever you change, re-check the table column by column — one extra shift on paper is a missing shift on the floor.

Pitman: 2-2-3 with fixed day and night teams

Pitman is the 2-2-3 skeleton with fixed crews: two teams permanently on days, two permanently on nights, a 14-day cycle, the same 42-hour average and the same every-other-weekend off. Because nobody flips between days and nights, night workers keep a stable — if inverted — rhythm, which is why control rooms, casinos and security operations prefer it. The rotating Panama version spreads the burden of nights across everyone instead. Same math, opposite philosophy: Pitman optimises for circadian stability, Panama for fairness.

Which 24/7 shift pattern fits which industry?

The pattern is only half the decision — the other half is whether your demand is actually flat. If a post genuinely needs the same staffing at 3 a.m. as at 3 p.m. (process plants, guarding, dispatch), any four-team pattern works and team culture decides. If nights are quieter than days — hospitals wards, hotels, contact centres — a pure four-team split overstaffs the night and understaffs the peak, and you are better served by overlapping or hybrid patterns than by any name in this table.

Are rotating 12-hour shift patterns legal in the US, UK and EU?

In the United States there is no federal limit on shift length for adults and no federally required rest period between shifts. The Fair Labor Standards Act does exactly one thing here: overtime pay at time-and-a-half past 40 hours in a workweek. Everything else lives at state and local level — which is why a rotation that is routine in Texas can generate daily penalties in Portland.

Oregon runs the only statewide fair-workweek law. Under ORS 653.436 and ORS 653.442 (text at oregon.public.law), large retail, hospitality and food-service employers must provide written schedules 14 days in advance (653.436), and employees may decline shifts that start less than 10 hours after the previous shift ended (653.442) — if they agree to work them anyway, those hours are paid at time-and-a-half. Chicago's Fair Workweek Ordinance covers employees earning up to 33.85 dollars per hour as of July 1, 2026 (the threshold is CPI-indexed), and employee-requested schedule changes only escape penalty pay if documented in writing. Los Angeles County's Fair Workweek Ordinance took effect on July 1, 2025 for retail and grocery employers with 300 or more employees.

The UK and EU regulate the pattern itself. The Working Time Regulations 1998 in the UK and Directive 2003/88/EC across the EU both guarantee 11 consecutive hours of daily rest, a 24-hour weekly rest period, and a cap of 48 hours average weekly working time, overtime included, measured over a reference period. A 12-hour shift leaves exactly 12 hours before the next one — legal, but with only one hour of margin: any handover overrun of more than an hour breaches the 11-hour floor. All four-team patterns average 42 hours, comfortably under the 48-hour cap; a three-team rotation at 56 hours is simply not lawful in Europe. UK employers should also track the Employment Rights Act 2025: its guaranteed-hours, shift-notice and cancellation-pay rules for zero- and low-hours workers still await regulations, and as of November 2026 Acas lists no start date for them.

Two caveats before you treat that table as clearance. Night-worker rules add stricter sub-limits in many countries, and several US states regulate specific sectors such as healthcare separately. And collective agreements routinely tighten every number above. Read the table as the legal floor, then check the agreement covering your site before announcing a new pattern.

How do you choose a pattern and build the roster?

There is no best pattern — there is a best fit. Five questions settle most cases:

• Is demand flat around the clock? If not, pure four-team patterns overstaff your quiet hours — look at overlapping or hybrid coverage first.
• Fixed or rotating nights? Fixed (Pitman) protects sleep rhythm; rotating (Panama) shares the burden. Ask the team — consent predicts retention better than any pattern name.
• How fatigue-critical is the work? Heavy machinery and clinical care argue against DuPont's 72-hour week and against fourth consecutive night shifts.
• What do your jurisdiction and collective agreement allow? Verify the 11-hour rest, the 48-hour average and any notice rules before you announce anything.
• Can people plan their lives on it? The 2-2-3's guaranteed three-day weekend every other week is the most family-legible promise on this page.

To try a pattern on paper, download the free 24/7 shift pattern template linked on this page. It has a sheet for each of the four patterns in this guide — 2-2-3 (Panama), Pitman, DuPont and 4-on-4-off: set the start date, name your teams, and check days, nights, rest and weekends before anyone works a minute of it. For any four-team pattern the core arithmetic is fixed — the template's real job is catching the exceptions: leave, swaps, training days and the odd public holiday.

Once a pattern is live, the hard part is not the cycle — it is every deviation from it. That is where AI scheduling earns its keep: imRoster, for example, takes a one-sentence description of your team and the chosen pattern, generates the full rotation, and automatically re-checks the 11-hour rest and weekly averages every time someone swaps a shift or calls in sick.

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