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Pitman schedule
The same two on, two off, three on cadence as Panama — but your crew stays on days or stays on nights instead of rotating between them.
Also called: 2-2-3 12-hour, Pitman fixed, Pitman rotating, Pitman days, Pitman nights
- Shift length
- 12 hours
- Cycle
- 14 days
- Average week
- 42 hours
- Tour
- Fixed
What the Pitman schedule is
Pitman runs the 2-2-3 rotation — two on, two off, three on, two off, two on, three off — on twelve-hour shifts across a fourteen-day cycle.
The difference from Panama is what happens to your tour. Under Pitman, a crew is assigned to days or to nights and stays there. The on-off rhythm rotates; the time of day does not.
For a lot of officers this is the better arrangement. A permanent night crew can build a sleep schedule and actually keep it, instead of resetting their body clock every few weeks.
How the cycle runs
Fourteen days on a fixed night tour. A day crew works the identical pattern, twelve hours earlier:
Set a start day, set the length to 14 days, and paint each one. Only the first cycle is painted — the app repeats it from there.
Start day: 30 August 2026Days: 14
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 14 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 →
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.
Hours and overtime
Seven twelve-hour shifts per fortnight — eighty-four hours, averaging forty-two a week, alternating thirty-six and forty-eight.
Because the tour never changes, shift differential is predictable: a night crew earns it on every scheduled shift rather than on some blocks and not others.
Who works it
Pitman is common wherever agencies found that rotating tours cost them more in fatigue than it gained in fairness:
- Police patrol and sheriff's offices
- Emergency communications
- Corrections
- Hospital and EMS crews
- Utilities and control rooms
- Security operations
Departments that publish this rotation
Every one of these is taken from the employer's own document — a recruitment page, a class specification or a collective agreement — not from a survey or a job board. The link goes to what that agency pays.
- Manalapan Police Department, FL — Article 25 defines shift work as seven 12-hour shifts in a fourteen-day cycle: two days on, two off, three on, two off, two on, three off.
- Nantucket Police Department, MA — Officers work on the Pitman schedule to offer community support and protection 24/7.
- Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, FL — Article 27 of the agreement with the Palm Beach County Police Benevolent Association sets 161 hours in a 28-day work cycle.
- Penn Hills Police Department, PA — The Department names the schedule, the weekdays and the count on its own salary page: "12-hour Pitman schedule that provides 182 pass days a year,….
The trade-off
What works
- Your body clock gets to settle — no flipping between days and nights
- Same days off every fortnight, indefinitely
- Predictable shift differential
- Off-duty work is easier to commit to when your tour never moves
What hurts
- A permanent night tour carries real long-term health costs
- Day and night crews rarely see each other
- Twelve-hour shifts, three in a row at the peak of the cycle
- Court dates land in your sleep window if you work nights
Put it on your calendar
Your crew stays on days or on nights, so the part that shifts is which days you are on — and every third weekend is yours.
Save the cycle once and those weekends show up months out, which is what you need when someone asks you about a wedding in April.
Common questions
What's the difference between Pitman and Panama?
The on-off pattern is identical. Pitman keeps a crew on a fixed tour — always days or always nights — while Panama rotates crews between the two.
Is Pitman the same as 2-2-3?
2-2-3 describes the cadence. Pitman is that cadence worked on a fixed tour.
How far ahead can I know my Pitman days off?
Indefinitely. The cycle is exactly two weeks, so your days off repeat on the same weekdays for as long as you stay on the crew.
Put the Pitman schedule on your calendar
Save the Pitman 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.
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