Guides for fire and EMS scheduling
Practical, in-depth walkthroughs of the scheduling problems every fire and EMS team faces, from building a rotation to understanding FLSA overtime and retiring the station whiteboard.
Three guides worth your time
Written for schedulers, chiefs, and anyone who has spent a shift change untangling coverage. Pick a topic to jump straight to it.
How to build a 24/48 rotation
Set up a three-platoon rotation the right way, from anchor date to Kelly days, so the schedule calculates itself.
Read guide7(k)FLSA 7(k) overtime explained
Why fire departments use a 28-day work period instead of a 40-hour week, and where the 212-hour threshold comes from.
Read guideDisplayReplace your station whiteboard
Move from a dry-erase board to a live station display without adding a screen anyone has to babysit.
Read guideHow to build a 24/48 rotation
A 24/48 rotation is the backbone of most career fire departments. Three platoons take turns so one is always on duty: 24 hours on, then 48 hours off, repeating forever. The trick is setting it up once so you never have to plot the calendar by hand again.
Start with your platoons
A 24/48 rotation runs on three teams, usually labeled A, B, and C. On any given day one platoon is on duty and the other two are off, and the pattern advances by one team each day.
Before you build anything in software, be clear on how many teams you run and which one was on duty on a day you can point to. That day is your anchor.
Set the anchor date
The anchor date is any date you know for certain which team worked. RescueShift uses it with modulo arithmetic to project the rotation forward for years and backward through your history, with no day-by-day entry.
Pick a recent, uncontested date. If A Shift was on duty last Monday, use that. Everything else falls into place from there.
Add Kelly days if you use them
Many departments insert a Kelly day, a scheduled day off, to bring average weekly hours down and control overtime. A straight 24/48 averages 56 hours per week, and a Kelly day trims that.
Kelly days make the cycle longer and less obvious to plot by hand, which is exactly where automated calculation pays off. Set the interval once and let the system handle it.
Do it once, not every month
With the pattern, anchor date, and Kelly days set, RescueShift generates the roster indefinitely. You spend your time on coverage and trades, not redrawing the calendar.
FLSA 7(k) overtime explained for fire departments
Most workers earn overtime after 40 hours in a week. Fire protection employees are different. Section 7(k) of the Fair Labor Standards Act lets departments use a longer work period, which is why a firefighter can work 56 hours in a week without triggering overtime.
The work period, not the week
Under 7(k), overtime is measured over a work period of 7 to 28 days rather than a single week. Departments choose a period length and apply it consistently.
The most common choice is a 28-day period, which lines up neatly with rotation cycles and payroll.
Where 212 hours comes from
For a 28-day fire protection work period, the overtime threshold is 212 hours. Hours worked beyond that in the period are paid at the overtime rate.
Shorter work periods use proportionally lower thresholds. The 28-day, 212-hour combination is simply the one most departments settle on.
Why it matters for scheduling
Because overtime accrues over the whole period, a single busy week does not automatically create overtime, and Kelly days are often used to keep members under the threshold.
Tracking hours against the right work period, rather than a 40-hour week, is what keeps FLSA calculations honest across a rotation.
This is a plain-language overview
FLSA rules have exceptions and your union contract may set its own terms. Treat this as a starting point and confirm the specifics with your department's HR or legal counsel.
Replacing your station whiteboard with a digital board
The dry-erase whiteboard in the day room has run fire stations for decades. It is also always slightly out of date, unreadable from across the room, and gone the moment someone wipes it. A digital station display keeps the familiar at-a-glance layout and fixes the rest.
Keep what works
A good station display shows the same things the whiteboard did: who is on duty today, which apparatus they are assigned to, and where coverage is thin.
The goal is not to reinvent the board. It is to keep the glanceable layout your crews already trust and make it accurate.
Make it read-only on purpose
The station display is intentionally read-only. Nobody can rewrite the schedule from the day room, so the board always reflects what is actually planned.
Changes happen in the app, where trades and sign-ups run through approvals and staffing checks. The display simply mirrors the result.
Set it and leave it
Open the display link in a browser on any station TV or a dedicated device, pick your station and units, and walk away.
It refreshes on its own as the schedule changes, so the board is current at shift change without anyone updating it by hand.
One board, always current
A digital station display ends the gap between the schedule and the whiteboard. What the crew sees on the wall is exactly what the roster says, all shift long.
Where to go next
Definitions, setup guides, the full feature list, and pricing, all a click away.
Glossary
Plain-language definitions for shift patterns, staffing rules, and the scheduling terms in these guides.
Documentation
Step-by-step setup guides, from creating your department to putting a live board on the station TV.
Features
See how rotation, the sign-up board, coverage, trades, and the station display fit together.
Pricing
Free personal calendars, Premium for sharing, and department plans that are flat monthly by crew size, from $60 a month.
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