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3/12 schedule
Three twelve-hour shifts, four days off, and the same days every week — the shortest full-time week on a twelve-hour tour.
Also called: 3 on 4 off, three twelves, 3x12
- Shift length
- 12 hours
- Cycle
- 7 days
- Average week
- 36 hours
- Teams
- 4 or more
What the 3/12 schedule is
Three twelve-hour shifts, then four days off. The cycle is exactly seven days, so it repeats on the same weekdays for as long as you hold the assignment.
That fixed weekly shape is the whole appeal. On most twelve-hour patterns your days off move around the calendar; on a 3/12 they do not move at all, and everyone around you learns them.
Thirty-six hours is under a full week, so agencies that run it usually attach something to make up the difference — a longer tour, a regular fourth shift, or a training day.
How the cycle runs
One week, and every week after it looks the same:
Set a start day, set the length to 7 days, and paint each one. Only the first cycle is painted — the app repeats it from there.
Start day: 30 August 2026Days: 7
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
Set the template once. Your days show up on every month after it.
September 2026
Print this rotation (PDF) One page — the cycle above, and a blank grid for your own dates.
Weekends off on this rotation
This cycle is 7 days, which divides by seven — so it lands on the same weekdays for ever and never drifts. Which weekends you get is decided by your squad, not by the pattern. Across the squads the answer runs from 0 weekends a year to 52.
A squad that does well on this rotation: 52 full weekends across a year. A weekend counts only when both the Saturday and the Sunday are free. All 21 rotations compared →
The trade for the four-day break
Four days off every single week is more time clear than any other twelve-hour pattern gives you week in, week out. Nothing else on this site repeats that often.
What you give up is hours. Three shifts is thirty-six, and on a pattern like Panama or 4 on 4 off you would be averaging forty-two. Whether that matters depends entirely on how your agency makes up the difference.
Hours and the work period
Three twelve-hour shifts is thirty-six hours a week, every week, with no long-and-short alternation to average out.
Because the cycle is seven days, the work period and the pay period line up without arithmetic — which is unusual on twelve-hour patterns and worth something at the end of the month.
Who works it
Agencies that want twelve-hour cover and a fixed weekly shape:
- Municipal police patrol
- RCMP patrol divisions
- Smaller agencies with fixed team assignments
- Dispatch centres
- Campus and hospital police
- Security operations
BlueShifts. Plan Your Year. Own Your Time.
The shift calendar built for your rotation, off-duty work, and life on and off the clock.
Save this pattern once and the year fills itself in — forward as far as you want, and back over the months you have already worked.
The trade-off
What works
- Four days off every week, permanently
- Same days off every week — easy for everyone else to learn
- Cycle and pay period line up
- Only three shift starts a week
What hurts
- Thirty-six hours means less base pay than a forty-two hour pattern
- Agencies often add a fourth shift to make up hours
- Three twelve-hour shifts in a row still runs thirty-six hours in three days
- Weekend cover depends entirely on which three days you hold
Put it on your calendar
Working it out by hand is where the mistakes happen.
Save the pattern once and BlueShifts fills the calendar in, forward and back.
What Canadian law does to this rotation
The cycle is the same shape in both countries. What sits underneath it is not, and in Canada it is provincial rather than federal — so the same rotation can be worked and paid differently depending on where you are.
The daily ceiling follows your shift, not the statute. Ontario's Employment Standards Act caps the working day at eight hours or the number of hours in an established regular workday, if it is longer than eight. On a 12-hour rotation that established day is 12-hour, so the ceiling is 12-hour — the rotation itself sets it. Going past that needs a written agreement, and no agreement lets anyone be required past 60 hours in a week.
Eleven consecutive hours off between shifts is the ESA minimum and it applies whatever the pattern. A 12-hour shift leaves 12 hours before the next one is due, so this cycle clears it — but a held-over shift or a court appearance on the turnaround eats straight into that margin.
The weekly rest rule is the one long runs meet. The ESA requires at least 24 consecutive hours off in each work week, or 48 consecutive hours off in every period of two consecutive work weeks. This cycle runs 3 shifts back to back, so it is the two-week version that has to carry it.
Overtime is triggered differently by province, and this rotation averages 36 hours. The weekly threshold runs from 40 hours in Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, the territories and federally, through 44 in Ontario and New Brunswick, to 48 in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Ontario and Quebec have no daily trigger at all; British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the territories have both, so exceeding 8 hours in a day counts even if the week does not. BC adds double time past 12 hours in a day. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador calculate overtime at 1.5 times the minimum wage rather than your own rate. Same roster, a different answer in almost every jurisdiction.
And one Quebec rule that catches shift workers out: premiums added to the hourly rate, such as night or evening shift premiums, are not taken into account when calculating overtime. Your overtime is worked out on the base rate, so a night premium does not carry into it.
Averaging is what makes a cycle like this work on paper. Where the pattern does not fit a calendar week, hours can be averaged over two to four weeks for the purpose of overtime, by written agreement. If you are in a union, your union can make that agreement with your employer — and in a policing or fire service it usually has, which is why your collective agreement rather than the statute is the document that decides your pay.
Two employers sit outside all of that. The RCMP works under one national agreement with the Treasury Board rather than provincial standards — its default workweek is forty hours from Monday to Friday with a workday of a minimum of eight consecutive hours, and separate articles for variable and shift work that take a detachment off that default. Federal enforcement uses a Variable Shift Schedule Arrangement, negotiated branch by branch, so two workplaces under one contract can run different rosters. In both cases the agreement is the whole answer and the province you live in does not enter into it.
Checked 7 August 2026. Provincial rules are quoted from the Employment Standards Act of the province named and, for Quebec, from the CNESST; federal provisions from the Treasury Board agreements. Employment standards are amended and collective agreements are renegotiated — check the current text before relying on a threshold or a figure.
Common questions
How many hours a week is a 3/12 schedule?
Thirty-six — three twelve-hour shifts, every week.
Is 3/12 the same as 3 on 4 off?
Yes. The pattern is three shifts on and four days off across a seven-day cycle; agencies write it either way.
Do the days off move?
No. The cycle is exactly seven days, so it lands on the same weekdays every week.
Put the 3/12 schedule on your calendar
Save the 3/12 schedule once, tell BlueShifts the day your cycle starts, and the rest of the year draws itself. Court, training and the details you pick up sit on the same grid.
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