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DuPont schedule
A four-week cycle of twelve-hour shifts that ends in seven consecutive days off — the longest built-in break of any common rotation.
- Shift length
- 12 hours
- Cycle
- 28 days
- Average week
- 42 hours
- Teams
- 4
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:
Set a start day, set the length to 28 days, and paint each one. Only the first cycle is painted — the app repeats it from there.
Start day: 30 August 2026Days: 28
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.
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.
Weekends off on this rotation
This cycle is 28 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 26.
A squad that does well on this rotation: 26 full weekends across a year. A weekend counts only when both the Saturday and the Sunday are free. All 21 rotations compared →
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
What works
- Seven consecutive days off every four weeks
- Only fourteen shifts a month
- Long breaks make second jobs and travel workable
- Predictable four-week repeat
What hurts
- A single day off between a day block and a night block
- Some weeks run past 48 hours
- Fast turnarounds between tours are hard on sleep
- Uneven weeks complicate pay periods
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.
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.
Put the DuPont schedule on your calendar
Save the DuPont schedule once, tell BlueShifts the day your cycle starts, and the rest of the year draws itself. Then the off-duty work you pick up around it goes in beside the shifts.
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