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Kelly schedule
Three platoons, twenty-four hour tours, a nine-day cycle — the fire service standard. In policing, a Kelly Day usually means something different.
- Shift length
- 24 hours
- Cycle
- 9 days
- Average week
- 56 hours
- Platoons
- 3
What the Kelly schedule is
The Kelly covers a station with three platoons working twenty-four hour tours. A platoon works a tour, takes a day off, works another, takes a day off, works a third, then takes four consecutive days off.
Nine days from start to repeat. It is the most widely used firefighting rotation in North America and turns up in EMS and some RCMP operations that staff twenty-four hour posts.
The four-day break at the end of the cycle is what people stay for.
How the cycle runs
One nine-day cycle for a single platoon:
24-hour tourDay off
Kelly Days in policing
In police departments, "Kelly Day" often means something else entirely — a scheduled day off inserted into a rotation to bring average weekly hours down to the contracted figure.
An agency running a pattern that would otherwise average forty-four hours a week might grant a Kelly Day every few weeks to pull the average back to forty. It is a correction built into the cycle rather than a rotation in its own right, and it is easy to lose track of, because it doesn't repeat on the same rhythm as the underlying pattern.
Hours and overtime
Three twenty-four hour tours every nine days averages fifty-six hours a week — far above a standard week, which is why the fire service has its own federal work-period rules.
Those rules are why hour tracking on this schedule matters more, not less, than on a forty-hour pattern.
Who works it
Twenty-four hour tours belong to a specific set of operations:
- Fire departments
- EMS and ambulance services
- Some RCMP and corrections posts
- Airport rescue and firefighting
- Industrial fire brigades
- Remote-site emergency cover
The trade-off
What works
- Four consecutive days off every nine
- Only about ten tours a month
- Long breaks support second jobs and travel
- Simple, memorable cycle
What hurts
- Twenty-four hours on duty, with interrupted sleep
- Fifty-six hour average weeks
- A nine-day cycle drifts through the week
- Recovery after a busy tour eats into the day off
Put it on your calendar
Nine days, twenty-four hour tours, and a Kelly day that moves through the week.
Save it once and you can see which tours you are on next month without counting from the last one.
Common questions
What is a Kelly Day?
In the fire service it refers to the day off inside the Kelly rotation. In policing it usually means a scheduled day off added to a rotation to bring average weekly hours down to the contracted number.
How long is the Kelly cycle?
Nine days — three twenty-four hour tours, each followed by a day off, then four days off together.
How many hours a week is the Kelly schedule?
About fifty-six on average, which is why it falls under different work-period rules than a standard forty-hour schedule.
Put the Kelly schedule on your calendar
Save the Kelly schedule once, tell BlueShifts the day your cycle starts, and the rest of the year draws itself. Leave, court and the work you take on your own time go in around it.
Scan to install — or hold it up for the officer next to you.
