DuPont schedule

How the DuPont rotation works

The DuPont cycle is 28 days long and never repeats the same block twice in a row. Starting on cycle day 1: four night shifts, three days off, three day shifts, one day off, three night shifts, three days off, four day shifts, and then seven consecutive days off. That final week is the reason people ask for the schedule by name.

Read the middle of the cycle carefully. The single day off between the three days and the three nights is the hardest turn in the pattern: your third day shift ends in the evening, you have one calendar day off, and the next evening you start the first of three nights. Most crews treat that day as a sleep-in day rather than a real day off.

Four crews run the plant, each starting the cycle seven days apart. On any calendar day two crews are working, one on days and one on nights, one crew is in a short break, and one is somewhere in its week off. The generator's crew buttons step the cycle a week at a time to match that stagger.

Hours, overtime, and what it pays

Fourteen 12-hour shifts in 28 days is 168 hours, an average of 42 a week, but the DuPont bunches them. When the workweek lines up with the cycle the four weeks run 48, 72, 48 and 0 hours: the 72-hour week holds the three days, the single day off and the three nights. Other alignments spread the hours differently, and the table above shows how far the overtime range moves.

That 72-hour week is the DuPont's signature and its payroll problem. Under a 40-hour weekly threshold it carries 32 overtime hours on its own, and the week off contributes none, so an hourly worker on the DuPont earns far more overtime than someone on the Pitman working the same 168 hours per cycle. Employers know this; many pay DuPont crews under a 12-hour-shift agreement that treats 84 hours per fortnight as straight time, or salary the roles, so check your handbook before counting on the FLSA numbers.

Differentials on the DuPont are lumpy too. Seven of the fourteen shifts are nights, but they arrive as a block of four and a block of three, so a night-differential pay period can look very different from the one before it. The overtime pay calculator will price any single week at your rate.

Who uses it and why

The pattern is named for the DuPont company, where it was developed for continuous-process chemical plants. It is still most common where a process cannot stop: chemical plants, refineries, power stations, pulp and paper mills, and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Operators who need to run for weeks at a time value the fact that a single 28-day cycle gives everyone equal nights, equal weekends and one real vacation-length break.

Workers tend to love or hate it. The seven days off is long enough for a genuine trip without using leave, and the pattern gives every crew the same weekends over a cycle. Against that, the 72-hour week and the four-night block are physically hard, and the one-day turnaround from days to nights is the most common complaint.

Pros and cons

The trade the DuPont asks you to make, in one list.

• —Pro: seven consecutive days off every 28 days, without touching vacation.
• —Pro: days, nights and weekends are shared equally across the four crews.
• —Pro: only 14 shifts per cycle, the same total as the Pitman or 2-2-3.
• —Con: a 72-hour week each cycle when the workweek lines up with the cycle.
• —Con: a single day off between the day block and the night block.
• —Con: a four-night stretch with only three days off after it.

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