Capacity reports
Know what each bay carriesand prove it
A capacity study of your racking, sealed by an engineer. It establishes what each configuration is rated to carry, and issues the drawings and load plaques that say so on the floor.
OTS Steel Solutions
Single-deep pallet rack
Maximum permissible loads — all loads uniformly distributed
- Maximum unit load
- Total load per bay
Warning
These capacities assume new, undamaged components. Damage reduces capacity.
Designed in accordance with CSA A344
Drawing no.
Stamp date
Sealed by an engineer — Optim-Structure
When you need one
A rating belongs to one configuration
A capacity is calculated for a set of beam levels, in a building, on a slab, under particular trucks. Change any one of those and the number describes something that is no longer standing.
- Racking that bears no engineer's seal
- CSA A344 rarely says must. It says it here: racking that carries no seal must be examined to establish that its design met the standards in force when it was built, and that seismic forces were accounted for.
- A beam that was moved, or a level that was added
- Reconfiguring racking or changing beam heights is not permitted without an engineer's approval, because it can create an overload nobody can see. Any component change or reconfiguration means the structure has to be certified again.
- A run that moved to another building
- Relocation goes through the same certification process as a new installation — new analysis, new drawings, new plaques. It is also why drawings carry the address of the site they belong to: drawings for one building do not describe another.
- Racking bought used
- Every component gets examined by a competent person, anything damaged or of doubtful compatibility is discarded, and the capacities are determined so the permissible configurations are known before the rack goes into service — not once the bays are full.
- After damage, when the bay stays in service
- All rack damage reduces the structure's real capacity. Where a damaged component is not replaced straight away, the reduction is something an engineer calculates and states, not something the floor estimates.
In Québec, the calculation is a reserved act.
CSA A344 uses should throughout and switches to must for this: rack capacity must be determined by an engineer familiar with the guide. Racking is a structure under the Loi sur les ingénieurs, so the work is reserved. Ours is sealed by an engineer at Optim-Structure, our sister engineering firm.
What we need from you
It starts with what you store
A capacity study is a needs assessment first: the product, the equipment that handles it, and the building the two meet in. You already know most of it.
- What you store — weight, dimensions, packaging, pallet type
- The heaviest unit load, not the average one
- The handling equipment, and how high it reaches
- The building — structure, slab, columns and clearances
- Layout and elevation drawings, if you still have them
- If they are gone, we measure the area and draw it to scale
- Any sealed drawings or load plaques already issued
- What has moved, been extended or been relocated since installation
Two of those are less obvious than they look. Capacities are built from the maximum weight of everything a component supports, with no reduction for average weights or fill factors — so it is the heaviest pallet that sets the number, not the typical one. And verifying that the floor can carry what the racking puts into it is the owner's responsibility, which may take an engineer of its own; where the structural design calls for it, you may also be asked for a geotechnical report establishing the seismic site class.
What is issued
A report, drawings, and plaques
- A sealed capacity report
- Signed and sealed by an engineer at Optim-Structure, stating what each configuration is rated to carry and the basis the calculation rests on.
- Drawings that name the building
- Layout and elevation, carrying the address of the site they describe. That address is what makes a later relocation visible instead of invisible.
- Load plaques stating both limits
- A plaque has to establish two numbers, not one: the total load per bay, and the maximum unit load allowed on the beams. Without the second, a bay can be correct in total and overloaded on a single pallet.
- Each plaque points at its drawing
- The plaque references the drawings that establish the limit, so a number on the wall traces back to the calculation that produced it rather than to whoever printed the sign.
- Filed in the OTS Portal, per site
- Report, drawings and plaque schedule live together by site and by year, with the current version flagged and the one it replaced still visible.
One thing CSA A344 recommends against, and the reason is worth knowing: do not label load limits on the beams. Beams move. Re-set a level and the label travels with it, still stating a limit that belonged to the configuration it left behind. The limits belong on a plaque, because a plaque describes a bay and a configuration rather than a single member.
The OTS Portal
The certificate an auditor asks for
Reports, drawings and plaque schedules are filed by site and by year, with the current one flagged. When a configuration changes, the version it replaced stays in the list — which is how you tell at a glance whether the paperwork still matches the building.
Capacity & drawings
Cold store — Saint-Hyacinthe
- Current
Capacity report — aisles A to D
Sealed 4 February 2026
- Issued
Layout and elevation drawings
Sealed 4 February 2026
- Superseded
Capacity report — before the aisle D rebuild
Sealed 11 September 2024
One report per configuration. Change the racking and the file changes with it.
The line at the bottom of the plaque
Every capacity assumes undamaged steel
The plaque carries a warning as well as two numbers, and the warning is the half people skip: those capacities hold for new, undamaged components. All rack damage reduces the real capacity of the structure. A struck column does not carry what the drawing says it carries, and no plaque can tell you by how much.
So a capacity report and an annual inspection are one programme rather than two purchases. The report establishes what the racking is rated to carry. The inspection finds what has happened to it since. The repair is designed and certified so the rating holds again. Leave the middle one out and the first becomes a document about a building that has moved on.
FAQ
Questions we get
Yes, and it is the ordinary case rather than the awkward one. Where the drawings are gone, the installation area is measured and drawn to scale, and the components are identified from what is standing. Racking with no engineer's seal has to be examined anyway — CSA A344 asks for it, to establish that the design met the standards in force when it was built and that seismic forces were accounted for. The report is then built from what is there, not from a file nobody can find.
A catalogue rates a component under stated conditions. What you need is the capacity of the whole frame as it stands in your building: beam levels, bay width, whether the row is single or tied back-to-back, how it is anchored, whether it is plumb and level, and the seismic conditions of the site. A rack only has its rated capacity if it was installed plumb and level, and CSA A344 requires the capacity to be determined by an engineer familiar with the guide. Those two sentences are the whole answer.
Before it goes into service. Every component should be examined by a competent person, anything damaged or of doubtful compatibility discarded, and the capacities determined so the permissible configurations are established first. One more thing worth raising with the seller: mixing new and used components from different manufacturers can have consequences for the manufacturers' warranties.
Ask what the seal covers. For a new installation the drawings and specifications have to be prepared, signed and sealed by an engineer, and where the National Building Code applies the rack has to be designed to CSA's steel-design standard for racking — so a seal on the design is the starting point rather than the whole file. What still has to be true is that the rack was built to those drawings: any deviation on site needs the designer's or the engineer's approval and has to be recorded on as-built drawings. OTS certifies new racking on exactly that basis.
Related
Get started
Price a capacity report for your site
Answer a few questions about your building, your product and your racking. We scope the study against what is actually standing in it.