🕰 Pitman (2-2-3) Schedule for 12-Hour Shifts: Complete Guide

The Pitman schedule — also known as the 2-2-3 schedule — is one of the most common 24/7 coverage patterns in healthcare, manufacturing, security, and logistics. It runs four crews on 12-hour shifts in a 14-day cycle. Here is exactly how it works and what to think about before adopting it.

The rotation pattern

Each crew works:

• 2 days on, 2 days off, 3 days on
• Then 2 days off, 2 days on, 3 days off
• The full cycle repeats every 14 days

Across the 14-day cycle each crew works 7 days — 84 hours total, averaging 42 hours per week. With four crews on the rotation, you have 24/7 coverage with no shift unstaffed.

The 14-day calendar at a glance

Using A, B, C, D for the four crews on day shift (D for night-shift inverse):

• Day 1-2: Crew A days, Crew C nights
• Day 3-4: Crew B days, Crew D nights
• Day 5-7: Crew A days, Crew C nights
• Day 8-9: Crew B days, Crew D nights
• Day 10-11: Crew A days, Crew C nights
• Day 12-14: Crew B days, Crew D nights

The pattern is symmetric, which is why crews can swap day/night every cycle or every 4-6 weeks depending on policy.

Pros

• Every other weekend off. Predictable, popular with workers with families.
• Half the year off. 182 days off per year is genuinely competitive.
• Long stretches of recovery. The 3-day weekends every two weeks aid sleep recovery.
• Simple bookkeeping. Predictable cycle, simple to roster.

Cons

• 12-hour shifts are long. Fatigue accumulates on the 3-day stretch.
• Night-shift health risk. All 12-hour night shifts carry elevated cardiovascular and metabolic risk; rotation policy matters.
• Overtime spillover. Coverage gaps mean the off-rotation crew often gets called in.
• Hard to swap. Every shift swap shifts coverage somewhere else.

Pitman vs other 24/7 patterns

• DuPont (4 on / 4 off variants). Longer stretches on and off, harder on recovery.
• Continental. 8-hour shifts, less fatigue, but every other weekend on.
• Southern Swing. 8-hour shifts on a rotating pattern, slow rotation.

Implementation checklist

1. Confirm 12-hour shifts are legal for your role and jurisdiction.
2. Set a rotation cadence for day/night swap (we recommend 2-4 weeks).
3. Define an on-call escalation path so off-crews are not pulled in every week.
4. Track actual hours, not scheduled hours — the 84-hour fortnight only works if breaks and overtime are recorded honestly.
5. Set a fatigue-monitoring policy for the 3-day stretches.

Tracking Pitman attendance with DeskTrust

DeskTrust’s automated time record captures real start and end times on 12-hour shifts, normalizes them to local time, and flags overtime against scheduled hours. The 14-day rolling view aligns with the Pitman cycle so you can see hours worked vs hours scheduled per crew. See plans or start a free trial.