For utility and network engineers

A standby week means the storm decides your plans, not you

Power, water and telecoms networks need somebody available whenever something fails, which produces a standby rota: a week at a time, at home, phone on, and out of the door within the hour when the call comes. A quiet standby week and a storm week look identical in advance.

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The schedules this actually has to cope with

Freeish is built around these, not around a nine-to-five with the occasional exception.

Standby weeks

One week in four or six, on call around the clock. At home, and not free.

Callouts

At any hour, for as long as the job takes. The following day is affected whether or not it is a working one.

Storm work

Weather turns a standby week into days of continuous work with no notice at all.

Planned outages

Scheduled overnight or at weekends because that is when the network can be taken down.

What it sounds like at home

“Standby weeks read as ordinary weeks to everyone at home.”
“A callout at two in the morning wrecks a day that was supposed to be normal.”
“Storms turn a week into something nobody could have planned for.”
“My family stop booking anything during my standby week, which is a quarter of the year.”
“Planned outages land on weekends and get forgotten by everybody.”

Where Freeish fits

Standby weeks go in as blocks, so the whole week reads as constrained rather than free.

A callout is one addition, and the recovery after it can be visible too.

Planned outage nights go in as soon as they are scheduled.

Set the standby rota once and it keeps generating rather than being re-entered.

One week, start to finish

Gareth, network engineer

Gareth sets his one-in-five standby rota once.
His family can see which week is his months ahead.
A callout at 02:00 gets added, and the next morning is marked as recovery.
A planned overnight outage goes in when it is scheduled.
They book a weekend away in a week he is definitely not on standby.

Questions utility and network engineers ask

How do I show a standby week?

As a block covering the week. The point is that it reads as constrained rather than free, which is exactly what a standby week is.

Does it handle a one-in-five rota?

Yes. Set it once and it repeats forward, so the calendar is right months out.

What about a callout in the middle of the night?

Add it in seconds. The people following you see it, and the day after can be marked as recovery.

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