DuPont schedule

What the DuPont schedule is

DuPont is a four-team, twelve-hour rotation on a twenty-eight day cycle, developed by the chemical company whose name it carries to keep plants running continuously.

The sequence runs four nights, three off, three days, one off, three nights, three off, four days, then seven days off. That last week is the whole point of the pattern.

It is a demanding schedule with a generous reward at the end, and people tend to have strong opinions about it in one direction or the other.

How the cycle runs

The full twenty-eight days:

Print this rotation (PDF) One page — the cycle above, and a blank grid for your own dates.

The seven-day break

One full week off every four weeks changes what is possible outside work. Real travel, a second job worked in a block, a proper stretch of family time — none of which fit into a two-day weekend.

The cost is the middle of the cycle, where a single day off sits between three day shifts and three night shifts. That turnaround is the hardest twenty-four hours in any common rotation.

Hours and overtime

Fourteen twelve-hour shifts across twenty-eight days — one hundred and sixty-eight hours, averaging forty-two a week.

The distribution is severe: some weeks run well past forty-eight hours, one runs to zero. Where your agency's work period boundaries fall makes a large difference to what gets paid as overtime.

Who works it

DuPont is more common in industry than in policing, but it turns up in both:

• Chemical and refining plants
• Manufacturing and process operations
• Power generation and utilities
• Some police and corrections agencies
• Security operations
• Mining and heavy industry

The trade-off

Put it on your calendar

Four weeks, four night shifts in a row, and a full seven days off at the end that you plan a year around.

Save the twenty-eight days once and that week off is on the calendar months before you need to book anything against it.

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 4 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 42 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

What is the DuPont schedule sequence?

Four nights, three days off, three day shifts, one day off, three nights, three days off, four day shifts, then seven days off.

How many hours a week is the DuPont schedule?

Forty-two on average across the twenty-eight day cycle, though individual weeks vary widely.

Why does it end in a full week off?

The pattern concentrates the work into the first three weeks of the cycle so the fourth can be left clear — the trade that defines the schedule.