Rack inspection
An annual structural examination under engineering supervision, with every finding graded by severity and given a deadline.
Compliance
Racking is a structurewith a legal life
A rack is engineered before it is bought, sealed before it is loaded, inspected every year it is used, and re-analysed every time it is changed. OTS carries that whole life — one team, one record, sealed by an OIQ-member engineer.
The life of a rack
Nobody buys a rack once
It is bought like equipment and it behaves like a building. Five things have to stay true for as long as you own it, and only three of them are jobs you hire out.
- Know what you have
- Drawings, a load plaque, a seal. Racking built to something other than the current steel-design standard and carrying no engineer's seal has to be examined — to confirm its design met the standards in force when it was built, and that seismic forces were accounted for. In practice, if nobody can tell you which standard it was built to, you are in that position. Until it exists, nothing downstream has anything to measure against.
- Inspect it
- Your people walk the aisles monthly for what is visible from the floor. Once a year a structural examination is carried out under the supervision of an engineer, and the findings come back graded rather than listed.
- Certify what it carries
- Capacity is determined by an engineer familiar with CSA A344 — not by the beam, and not by the catalogue. The plaque states the total load per bay and the maximum unit load, and names the drawings that establish both.
- Repair what is damaged
- All damage reduces real capacity. A repair is designed, inspected and certified by an engineer, and the certification covers how the repair integrates into the damaged frame — certifying a kit on its own is not acceptable.
- Keep the record
- Every inspection result is recorded, and where a health-and-safety committee exists it gets a copy. Reports live in the OTS Portal by site and by year with the current one flagged, which is the one an auditor asks for.
Québec
The standard is not the law
You will be told that CSA A344 requires an annual inspection. It does not — it says in its own opening that it imposes no obligation, and the few places it does say must are not that one. What binds you here is a statute that never mentions racking, and it is harder on the engineering than the standard is.
| CSA A344 | Québec law | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A consensus standard. It states in its opening pages that it imposes no obligation, and it is written in “should” — the handful of places it says “must” are the exceptions that prove it. | The Loi sur les ingénieurs and the Loi sur la santé et la sécurité du travail. Neither one mentions pallet racking. |
| Who wrote it | A CSA technical committee — with CNESST, the province's own regulator, sitting on it. | The legislature. The acts it reserves belong to members of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec. |
| Who it binds | Nobody, on its own terms. It is the recognised practice for specifying, using, inspecting and repairing racking. | The employer, who must take the measures necessary to protect workers' health, safety and physical integrity — whatever the manufacturer supplied. |
| What it asks of you | Routine inspections monthly, specialist inspections annually, and a real interval set by a risk assessment of your site. | Nothing about frequency. It reserves the engineering: designing a rack, and analysing any change made to one. |
The standard imposes nothing. The obligation behind it is real.
Nobody is fined for ignoring a consensus standard. The employer's duty under the LSST is general and binding, and in Québec designing a rack — or analysing a change to one — is an act reserved to an engineer. Inspecting to CSA A344 is how a facility shows it did both.
The seal
What only an engineer can sign
Our reports are sealed by an OIQ-member engineer at Optim-Structure, OTS's sister engineering firm. Two of the points below are reserved acts under Québec law. The rest are where the standard puts an engineer — and where a seal is the difference between a document and an opinion.
- The design of a new installation, issued as drawings and specifications signed and sealed
- Load and structural-resistance calculations, accounting for the handling equipment, lateral forklift impact and the site's seismic conditions
- The capacity of any racking that does not already carry a seal
- The annual specialist inspection, performed by or under the supervision of an engineer
- The damage limits each finding is graded against, and the deadline attached to it
- A repair — its design, its inspection, and its integration into the frame it repairs
- Any relocation, beam-height change, added level or change of configuration
The first two happen before the racking is ever loaded. The rest come back for as long as you own it.
The work
The three you hire out
Inspection, capacity reports and repair are the middle of that life. Each has its own page, because each is a different job with a different trigger.
Capacity reports
What each bay is rated to carry, determined by an engineer and stated on a plaque that names the drawings behind it.
Rack repair
Engineered repair of impact damage, certified as installed in the frame it repairs rather than as a part in a box.
A cracked or split component is replaced, not straightened. When a frame is too far gone to repair, the replacement is engineered, supplied and installed by the same team. See racking products
FAQ
Questions we get
Partly, and the split is worth knowing. CSA A344 is a consensus standard and states that it imposes no obligation. What binds you is the employer's duty under the Loi sur la santé et la sécurité du travail to take the measures necessary to protect workers, together with the fact that designing racking, analysing a change to it and calculating what it can carry are acts reserved to a member of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec. Inspecting to CSA A344 is how a facility shows it met the first and respected the second.
With a capacity report rather than an inspection. Racking that carries no engineer's seal has to be examined to confirm that its design met the standards in force when it was built and that seismic forces were accounted for. Once you know what each bay is rated to carry, an annual inspection has something to measure against and a repair has something to restore.
Any member of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec who knows CSA A344 can. The requirement is the seal, not the firm. Ours comes from Optim-Structure, our sister engineering firm, which is why the inspection, the capacity report and the repair certificate for the same building come from one engineer instead of three.
The manufacturer has to supply racking that is safe. Keeping it safe once it is standing in your building falls to the employer, and inspection and maintenance are the user's responsibility. You can engage specialists for the parts that need more specific knowledge — that is what we are — but the duty itself does not transfer with the work.
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