Drilling down on roster design: comparing fly-in fly-out roster patterns in the West Australian mining industry

Roster schedule design is integral to an effective Fatigue Risk Management System, and can impact worker health, safety, employee satisfaction, psychological health, productivity, and cost. However, fatigue-based roster scheduling decisions are frequently made using little or no supporting data. This analysis aims to provide objective fatigue-risk data for roster schedules commonly used within Western Australian mining fly-in-fly-out operations. Ten of the most common roster schedules within the abovementioned context were identified, as were two highly pertinent factors: day/night shift start/finish times, and commute duration to/from individuals' home airports. In total, 150 combinations of roster schedules, shift start/finish times, and commute durations were analyzed using the Fatigue Audit InterDyne (FAID®, Interdynamics Pty Ltd) Standard biomathematical model. Through this analysis, we show that earlier shift start/finish times increase predicted fatigue-risk for day shifts and decrease predicted fatigue-risk for night shifts. Additionally, when finishing a roster schedule on night shifts, much of the commute home from the airport may be at a high fatigue-risk. This risk further increases when the roster includes later finish times. This project presents a comprehensive data-driven comparison of fly-in fly-out shifts and roster schedules specific to Western Australian fly-in fly-out mining operations. The results from this novel analysis should not be used in a prescriptive manner; however, they aim to provide new insight that may assist decision-making around roster scheduling for fly-in fly-out mining operations globally.