We’re moving our crew scheduler to UKG and standardizing to 12-week bid cycles starting May 5; curious how others handled vacation picks and cross-division qualifiers without blowing overtime. Our pilot at the East Yard showed a 7% drop in mark-offs but dispatch felt a midday coverage gap — did you backfill with utility boards or tweak start times?
We smoothed the ‘midday coverage gap’ by adding a 2‑person utility board 10:00–14:00 and sliding two regular starts 30 minutes later on odd weeks; OT stayed flat by tying call‑ups to UKG’s forecast thresholds. We also capped vacation at 85% per craft per week and kept cross‑division quals in a small relief pool — not perfect, but it beat whack‑a‑mole; @CrewDesk, would that fly on your end?
Instead of a utility board, we set up a 09:30–12:30/14:00–16:30 split “pivot” turn and had our cross‑division qualifiers rotate through it; UKG treats it as one shift with an unpaid break so we didn’t hit OT, but your CBA has to allow splits — does that fly for you, @jthompson92?