DuPont schedule

How the DuPont schedule works

The DuPont schedule covers a workplace 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with four crews working 12-hour shifts. Each crew follows the same 28-day cycle, a week apart:

• 4 night shifts, then 3 days off;
• 3 day shifts, then 1 day off;
• 3 night shifts, then 3 days off;
• 4 day shifts, then 7 days off.

On any day, one crew works days, one works nights and two are off. This is the version in Wikipedia’s shift plan article, which starts with nights; some sites start the same cycle with the 4 day shifts (“reverse DuPont”), which you can pick in the calculator.

Hours on a DuPont schedule

Each crew works 14 twelve-hour shifts every 28 days: 168 hours, or 42 hours a week on average, about 2,190 hours a year. The weeks are uneven. Depending on where the week starts, a crew can have a 72-hour week (3 days and 3 nights in seven days) and, every four weeks, a week with no shifts at all.

Under the US federal overtime rule (hours over 40 in a workweek), that unevenness matters: the same rotation can mean very different overtime depending on which day your employer’s workweek starts. The calculator works it out for your crew and year under Overtime under a 40-hour week, for each possible start day.

Finding your crew and start date

Your crew letter (A, B, C or D) is what your employer calls it; what matters is the date your crew starts its cycle: its first of the four night shifts (or of the four day shifts on the reverse version). Type that date, then check the strip of your first two weeks against your real schedule. If it is off, move the date by a day or a week until it matches. Each crew starts the cycle 7 days after the one before it, so crew B starts a week after crew A.

Pros and cons

• For: a full week off every four weeks without using vacation; only 14 shifts a month; everyone takes turns on nights and weekends.
• Against: 12-hour shifts; switching between nights and days twice in a cycle, which many people find hard on sleep; six shifts in seven days in the middle of the cycle (3 days, 1 off, 3 nights).

Add your shifts to Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook

Press Add to calendar (.ics). It saves one file with every shift of the year for your crew, made on this device. Then:

• Google Calendar: on a computer, open Google Calendar, go to Settings, then Import & export, choose the file and the calendar to add it to. (The phone app can’t import files, but shows the shifts once they are imported.)
• iPhone or iPad: open the file from the Files app or an email and tap Add All. On a Mac, open it in Calendar or use File, Import.
• Outlook: in Outlook on the web choose Add calendar, Upload from file; in Outlook for Windows, File, Open & Export, Import/Export.

Tip: make a new, empty calendar called “Shifts” and import into that. If the rotation changes, delete that calendar and import a new file. Shift times are saved without a time zone, so a 7 AM shift shows at 7 AM on your phone wherever it is set, including across daylight-saving changes.