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FIFO rosters explained: 8/6, 2/1, 2/2 and the patterns in between
A FIFO roster is the repeating pattern of days a fly-in fly-out worker spends on site and days they spend at home, written with the days on first and the days off second. An 8/6 is eight days on site then six at home, a 2/1 is two weeks on and one week off, and a 2/2 is two weeks each way. The pattern repeats for as long as the job runs, and flights, rooms and crew changeovers all hang off its dates.
How FIFO rosters work
Every FIFO roster has two halves. The swing is the block on site, and R&R (rest and recreation) is the block at home. Put them together and you have one cycle. People also call the whole pattern a rotation, a swing roster or just the roster, and you'll hear "even time" for any pattern where the two halves match.
The shorthand trips people up because some patterns are written in weeks and some in days. A 2/1 and a 14/7 are the same roster. So are a 2/2 and a 14/14. An 8/6 is always days, because eight weeks on would be a very different job. When a pattern could be read either way, ask for it in days, and put it in days on the job ad so nobody arrives expecting the wrong thing.
Sites that run around the clock usually split each position into panels, sometimes called A crew and B crew. While one panel is on site the other is at home, and they cross on changeover day. Some sites also split a swing into day and night blocks, so a worker does part of the swing on days and the rest on nights.
Common FIFO roster patterns
These are the patterns a labour hire office sees advertised on remote mining, construction and maintenance work. The last column is plain arithmetic: days on divided by the length of the cycle.
| Pattern | Days on | Days off | Cycle (days) | Share on site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/3 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 57% |
| 5/2 | 5 | 2 | 7 | 71% |
| 7/3 | 7 | 3 | 10 | 70% |
| 7/7 | 7 | 7 | 14 | 50% |
| 8/6 | 8 | 6 | 14 | 57% |
| 9/5 | 9 | 5 | 14 | 64% |
| 2/1 (14/7) | 14 | 7 | 21 | 67% |
| 2/2 (14/14) | 14 | 14 | 28 | 50% |
| 3/1 (21/7) | 21 | 7 | 28 | 75% |
| 4/1 (28/7) | 28 | 7 | 35 | 80% |
Patterns with the same share can feel completely different. A 4/3 and an 8/6 both put 57 per cent of the cycle on site, but one has a worker travelling every week and the other every fortnight. At the heavy end, a 3/1 or a 4/1 puts three quarters or more of the cycle on site, and that's a lot to ask of anyone for long.
What each pattern means over a year
Multiply the share by 365 and the differences get concrete. A 2/1 puts a worker on site for about 243 days a year. An 8/6 comes to about 209, even time to about 183 and a 4/1 to about 292. Those are rostered days, before leave, sickness or a missed swing.
Flights follow the cycle, not the share. Divide 365 by the cycle length and you get the number of swings, and so the number of return trips, in a year: about 26 on an 8/6 or a 7/7, about 17 on a 2/1 and about 13 on a 2/2. Each one is a flight booking, a room booking and a changeover for the office.
Headcount follows the cycle too. To keep one position filled every day of the year, you need the cycle length divided by the days on. That's 1.5 people per position on a 2/1, 1.75 on an 8/6, two on even time and about 1.33 on a 3/1. So a client moving a crew from 2/1 to 8/6 is also asking you to find more people, and a quarter of a person per position adds up fast across a crew.
Which FIFO roster is best?
There isn't a best pattern, only a trade between time at home, travel and how tired people are by the back end of the swing. Longer swings mean fewer flights but more consecutive days on site. Shorter and even-time swings give people more time at home and cost more to staff and fly.
In Western Australia, the code of practice on mentally healthy workplaces for FIFO workers says even-time and shorter rosters are linked to better mental health and wellbeing outcomes, giving one week on and one week off, and eight days on and six off, as examples. It also says rosters of greater compression can result in fatigue. The code applies to WA workplaces using FIFO in resources operations and construction, and that was its position as at September 2026. Other states and territories have their own regulators, so check with the one where the site is.
Workers have views too, and they act on them. The same WA code notes that a person's stage of life and lifestyle may influence the roster they prefer and accept.
Multiple and flexible rosters across client sites
A site operator sets the pattern for its own site. A labour hire firm has to run every client's pattern at once. One client runs 2/1 on a shutdown, another wants 8/6 for production, a third wants even time for maintenance, and the same pool of workers moves between them.
The trouble usually starts when a worker finishes a swing on one site and gets offered a swing on another. On paper the dates don't overlap. In practice the new swing starts the day after they fly home, and their R&R has vanished. Or a cover worker picks up an extra swing that runs into the first days of their regular one. Neither shows up in a spreadsheet unless someone happens to be looking at both tabs at once.
What helps is seeing every client site on one timeline, with each worker's commitments across all of them. In Mustr's mining rostering, each client site has its own lane on a single timeline, and shifts can repeat weekly to build out a swing pattern. When you crew a shift, anyone already locked into another site that week is greyed out with the clashing site and dates, and a double-booking is blocked when the worker is assigned rather than flagged for later. It won't tell you a worker's R&R is too short, though. That's still your call.
Changeovers, travel days, flights and rooms
Changeover day is where FIFO rosters most often come unstuck. The outgoing panel needs to hand over, get to the airport and fly out. The incoming panel needs seats on the inbound flight, a room, a current induction and whatever tickets the site asks for. If any of that is wrong, someone either works a day short or sits in camp waiting.
Travel eats into the pattern from both ends. The WA code lists work schedules, including fly-in and fly-out days, and commuting arrangements, including travel home from sites or airports, among the things to consider when planning rosters to manage fatigue. Safe Work Australia's model Code of Practice on managing the risk of fatigue at work lists extended travel or commute times that reduce sleep opportunity as a fatigue hazard, and says "long commutes will be a reasonably foreseeable hazard for a remote workplace with no nearby accommodation". Whether a travel day counts as time worked is a question for the award or agreement that covers the work and for the client contract, so check those rather than the roster.
Rooms matter more than they look. The WA code says people with permanent rooms report better mental health and wellbeing outcomes than those in other arrangements, such as motelling or changing rooms in the middle of a roster. For an office booking crew into a camp, that's a good reason to ask the client for the same room across swings where the camp allows it. Keeping flights and rooms on the same record as the shift means that when a swing moves, the travel moves with it, and there's more on that in tracking flights and accommodation for FIFO crews. In Mustr, flights and accommodation sit on the shift itself, visible to the office and the client.
When someone drops off a swing
Sooner or later every FIFO roster loses a person the day before the flight. The replacement has to be free for the whole swing, hold everything the site requires and not be halfway through R&R from another job.
Safe Work Australia's model code suggests planning ahead for unplanned absences so workers aren't called in at short notice, and keeping roster changes to a minimum, especially in the 24 hours before a shift. For labour hire, the contingency is a bench of people who already hold the site's inductions and have told you when they're available.
The cover worker is also the person most likely to end up overdone, because they're doing you a favour. An extra swing on top of their regular one can wipe out their time at home entirely. In Mustr's shift editor, the crew panel shows each person's role, verified competencies and the exact dates they're free, including people who can only cover part of the shift, so a partial fit is visible before you book it.
Fatigue sits over every pattern
The pattern is only one part of fatigue. Shift length, night work, the move between days and nights, the heat and the travel all count. Safe Work Australia's model code lists more than three successive night shifts among the hazards that disrupt the body clock, and suggests not rostering workers for more than three successive night shifts. Safe Work Australia doesn't regulate work health and safety laws, so check what the regulator in your state or territory expects. If the client has its own fatigue management plan, your crew has to fit inside it, and it's worth asking for a copy before you roster the first swing.
Mustr doesn't enforce fatigue rules. They're on the public roadmap, not in the product. The checks at booking cover competencies, site inductions, double-bookings and availability, and the fatigue limits sit with your plan and your rosterer. There's more on setting that up in fatigue and rostering for swing crews.
A FIFO roster template, and where it stops working
A template is fine for working out a pattern. Pick a start date, colour the days on, copy the block down the year and you can see every changeover and every weekend at home.
It stops working when the template has to become the live roster. Workers move between sites. A swing gets extended by a day. Someone drops off and a cover worker picks up two weeks that overlap their own pattern, while the flights and rooms sit in another file. A spreadsheet won't stop you booking the same person twice unless someone has built that in, and usually nobody sees the clash until the worker is at the wrong airport.
Questions people ask
What is a FIFO roster called?
It goes by a few names. People call it a swing roster, a rotation or just the roster, with the time on site called the swing and the time at home called R&R. Where the two halves are the same length, such as 7/7 or 2/2, it's called even time.
What does an 8/6 roster mean?
Eight days on site, then six days at home, with the cycle repeating every 14 days. That puts 57 per cent of the cycle on site, or about 209 days a year before leave. It also means about 26 return trips a year, compared with about 17 on a 2/1.
What is a two and two roster?
A two and two roster, written 2/2 or 14/14, is two weeks on site followed by two weeks at home. It's an even-time pattern, so half of each 28-day cycle is on site. Keeping one position filled every day on a 2/2 takes two people.
What is a FIFO 2/1 roster?
On a 2/1 roster a worker spends two weeks on site and then a week at home, which is why it's also written 14/7. Two thirds of each 21-day cycle is on site, which comes to about 243 days a year. It means fewer flights than an 8/6 but less time at home.
What is the longest FIFO roster?
There's no single answer, because the pattern is set by the site, the client and the agreement covering the work. Of the common patterns in the table above, a 4/1 puts the largest share of the cycle on site, at 80 per cent. Heavier patterns raise bigger fatigue questions, so check the client's fatigue management plan and the regulator in the state where the site is.
If you're running swings across several client sites and want to see how they sit on one timeline, try Mustr with sample data or book a demo.