When I did this years ago I found 5 was really a minimum so that I could cover weekends and then had extra coverage as needed during the week.
I did find it was good to swap out the graveyard shift every 6 months or so.
When I worked with NASA and the Navy on remote locations that needed full time staffing, the rule of thumb was
5 people and 4 shifts was the absolute minimum, and the people had to be motivated enough to pull 12 hour shifts on a regular basis (i.e., this
was very bare bones). The 4th shift was needed during the weekends.
Anything less, and you would have uncovered periods if, say, 2 people got sick simultaneously.
Regards
Marshall
I believe that for ongoing long term operations, NASA and DOD
standards are 6 shifts worth of people, however you juggle the
particular shift lengths / schedules. I.e., NORAD, NASA ISS / Moon
mission mission control, etc.
You can do it with 5, but people need time to get sick, take
vacations, go to training, etc.
When I did this years ago I found 5 was really a minimum so that I could cover weekends and then had extra coverage as needed during the week.
I did find it was good to swap out the graveyard shift every 6 months or so.
When I worked with NASA and the Navy on remote locations that needed full time staffing, the rule of thumb was
5 people and 4 shifts was the absolute minimum, and the people had to be motivated enough to pull 12 hour shifts on a regular basis (i.e., this
was very bare bones). The 4th shift was needed during the weekends.
Anything less, and you would have uncovered periods if, say, 2 people got sick simultaneously.
I believe that for ongoing long term operations, NASA and DOD
standards are 6 shifts worth of people, however you juggle the
particular shift lengths / schedules. I.e., NORAD, NASA ISS / Moon
mission mission control, etc.
You can do it with 5, but people need time to get sick, take
vacations, go to training, etc.
It can be done with 5, with some stretch. There are gotcha's, and you need to run for a while to make sure that you have accounted for them. For example, with a barebones 5 person staffing there would never be more than 2 people on site at a time, except briefly during shift changes. If equipment maintenance + normal operation requires 3 people, say 2 manhandling gear and one watching operations, you can't do it in normal operations. At one site I worked with, that got to be bad enough that they hired an extra person specifically to address that hole in the schedule. (That site was remote enough that they couldn't get a temp to come in and fill the gap.)
The Apollo program ran their ground stations with 6 shifts, fully staffed on all 6. But, they had lots of money.
Regards
Marshall