DuPont vs Pitman: Which 12-Hour Schedule Should You Run?

Two of the most famous 24/7 patterns share the same skeleton — four crews, 12-hour shifts, a 42-hour weekly average — and disagree about everything else. The DuPont schedule bets on long breaks; the Pitman schedule bets on stable rhythm. Choosing between them is choosing which bet your team would take.

The DuPont cycle (each crew rotates through nights and days)

The Pitman fortnight (fixed day crews A/B, fixed night crews C/D)

Side by side

Choose DuPont if…

Your team treats the monthly week off as sacred — FIFO-adjacent cultures, long-commute workforces, and crews who travel on breaks consistently vote DuPont. You can absorb 72-hour weeks operationally, and your fatigue controls genuinely protect the four-night block.

Choose Pitman if…

Stability wins votes: parents and fixed-commitment lives prefer knowing their weekends a year ahead and keeping one sleep schedule. You can recruit (or fairly compensate) permanent night crews — that's the pattern's one structural demand. Most teams that vote, vote Pitman; most teams that switched to DuPont did it specifically for the week off.

The verdict

Default to Pitman for its gentler runs and guaranteed weekends; switch your shortlist to DuPont only if the monthly 7-day break is the thing your specific team names first. And either way, put both one-pagers in front of the crew — this comparison is precisely the kind of decision that should end in a vote, not a memo.

Build this schedule in Tommy

Set the rotation once and Tommy fills the weeks ahead — shift swaps, leave and coverage gaps handled in one place, with your team always seeing the latest version.

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