Pitman Schedule: The 2-2-3 Rota With Fixed Crews

What is the Pitman schedule?

The Pitman schedule is a 14-day rotation of 12-hour shifts: two shifts on, two off, three on, two off, two on, three off. Four crews cover 24/7. Two are permanent day crews and two are permanent night crews, and within each pair one crew works exactly the days the other has off.

Naming varies. Employers and scheduling guides do not use Pitman, Panama and 2-2-3 consistently, and some treat them as the same thing. On ShiftShow we use Pitman for the fixed-crew arrangement and Panama for the version where crews rotate between days and nights. If your roster moves you from days to nights every few weeks, see our Panama schedule guide instead.

A day crew’s fortnight, in order

The fortnight, day by day

With day 1 on a Monday, every crew’s fortnight looks like this, whether on days or nights:

The partner crew on the same shift works the mirror image, with its week 1 falling in your week 2. So one of you is always on duty, and your long weekends alternate.

Day crew calendar

Night crew calendar

How the four crews fit together

Swipe the table sideways to see every day of the cycle.

D = day shift, N = night shift, · = off. The bottom two rows check every date: ✓ means exactly one crew is on that shift.

Two features make the Pitman roster tidy:

• Mirror pairs. Crew B’s fortnight is crew A’s shifted by one week, which is exactly the days A has off. The same goes for C and D on nights. Every date has one day crew and one night crew.
• Fixed evening handovers. In the arrangement shown, crews A and C work the same dates, so the day crew A always hands over to C in the evening. B and D form the other pair. Morning handovers mix: at the end of a block, the night crew hands over to the other day crew. The night crews can also be offset differently, which still covers the clock but mixes the evening handovers too.

Cover is exact: 28 shifts per fortnight from four crews working seven each. Unless crews carry extra people, absences need overtime or relief staff.

Hours and time off

Seven 12-hour shifts per 14 days is 84 hours a fortnight. With a Monday start that is five shifts one week and two the next, which averages 42 hours a week over the fortnight: about 183 shifts a year and about 183 days with no shift starting. For a night crew, all of those shifts are nights.

No run of work is longer than three shifts and no break is longer than three days. With a Monday start, every other week ends in a three-day weekend from Friday to Sunday. For night crews that Friday starts with finishing Thursday’s night shift that morning, so it is part recovery day.

With a Monday start, the quiet week makes leave go a long way. Book its two shifts, Wednesday and Thursday, and you get a full week off for two days of leave. Add the Monday and Tuesday after it and you get 11 days in a row for four days of leave.

Weekends on the Pitman schedule

The Friday-to-Sunday weekends depend on the Monday anchor. For day crews some other start days still give 26 free weekends a year, though not always three days long. For night crews only the Monday anchor works. With any other start day, a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night shift always lands in the way.

A weekend counts as free only if you are not at work at any point on the Saturday or Sunday, so a night shift starting on Friday evening rules it out.

Fixed nights: the trade-off at the heart of Pitman

Nobody switches between days and nights. Day crews never work nights, and night crews keep the same routine every fortnight. For people who prefer nights, Pitman lets them stay on them.

The cost is that half the workforce are permanent night shift workers. A 2012 white paper on the US Department of Transportation’s PHMSA website says that, without the careful use of specialised devices and methods, only about 1% of people can adapt to night work, and that humans function quite poorly when required to work at night and sleep during the day. The UK Health and Safety Executive’s guidance is to offer a choice of permanent or rotating shifts and to try to avoid permanent night shifts.

Staffing night crews with people who choose nights follows the HSE’s advice to offer a choice. If no one wants permanent nights, the rotating Panama version shares them out instead.

Pros and cons of the Pitman schedule

How Pitman compares with HSE guidance

This check uses the night crews’ calendar, the more demanding of the two:

Guidelines summarised from the UK Health and Safety Executive’s good practice guidelines for shift work and its guidance HSG256, Managing shift work, which does not recommend weekly or fortnightly rotation. “Nights of normal sleep” counts the nights you can spend in bed at night between the two blocks.

Pitman meets the HSE’s guidance on short runs, consecutive days and free weekends, and nobody switches between days and nights. It falls outside the guidance on permanent night shifts and on night-shift length.

Pitman or Panama?

Choose Pitman if your people have clear preferences for days or nights. Choose Panama if nights should be shared out equally.

Pitman schedule FAQ

Sources

• Teambridge, Panama schedule meaning (Pitman, Panama and 2-2-3 naming).
• HiveDesk, The 2-2-3 schedule explained (Pitman for the 2-2-3 sequence with teams on fixed day or night shifts).
• J. C. Miller, Shift Plans with Seven Consecutive Shifts, white paper, April 2012, on the website of the US DOT Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) (adaptation to night work).
• Health and Safety Executive, Good practice guidelines for shift work schedules (choice of permanent or rotating shifts; avoiding permanent nights).
• Health and Safety Executive, HSG256, Managing shift work (weekly and fortnightly rotation).
• Weekend and coverage figures worked out by ShiftShow from the sequences shown on this page.

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