Rack repair
We certify the repair,not the kit.
Damaged racking repaired to a design an engineer sealed, then certified as the structure it is now part of. CSA A344 asks for exactly that — and a certificate covering only the kit does not meet it.
What CSA A344 asks for
Designed, inspected, certified. All three.
CSA A344 puts all three on an engineer, and then adds the part most of this industry skips: certifying a repair kit on its own is not acceptable.
- Designed by an engineer, for that frame
- The repair is drawn for the damaged member it is going onto — its section, its condition, where it sits in the run, and what the run is carrying above it. The sleeve is OTS's own design; the design of the repair is a fresh exercise every time.
- Certified as an assembly, not as a part
- The standard is explicit that certifying the kit, or its individual components, in isolation will not do. The certification has to account for how the kit integrates into the damaged frame. A certificate that travels in a box with the steel certifies the box.
- Traceable to a bay, not to a batch
- The standard also asks that the certification be traceable — by a mark on the repaired component, or by its precise location in the installation. Every repair we certify is filed against the aisle and bay it belongs to, so a year later the record still points at a piece of steel somebody can walk to.
A certified kit is not a certified repair.
The standard says so in as many words. Every repair OTS installs is certified as part of the frame it went into, by an OIQ-member engineer at Optim-Structure, our sister engineering firm.
Repair or replace
The decision is normally yours
CSA A344 leaves the choice between repairing and replacing to the user. What an engineer owes you is the basis for it: what the damage did, what each route has to achieve, and where the choice stops being one.
| Repair | Replace | |
|---|---|---|
| What happens to the member | It stays. The repair is installed to a method the manufacturer recommends, or to one an engineer has approved. | It comes out, and an equivalent structural member takes its place. |
| The strength it has to reach | A resistance at least equal to that of the original component. That is the bar — and the ceiling of what anyone can honestly promise. | Equivalent to the member it replaces, with the engineer certifying the structure that results. |
| What carries the seal | The repaired structure, with the sleeve accounted for inside the frame it is now part of. | The structure as rebuilt, with the new member in it. |
| When it is not a choice | A cracked or split component is never repaired. | Cracked or split components. There, replacement is not optional. |
| What it costs the floor | Installed in place wherever the layout allows. A red-tagged bay was already out of service before we arrived. | More of the run comes down first — the frame carries the bays on both sides of it. |
We do not publish a turnaround time, because the honest answer depends on the damage, the design and the parts. What we will tell you is which of these two columns your bay is in, before you are asked to choose.
How a repair runs
From a bay tagged red to a bay back in service
Four steps, and only one of them involves a tool.
The damage is reported
From an inspection finding, or from the floor as soon as it happens. The bay comes out of service first and gets discussed second.
An engineer assesses and designs
All rack damage reduces the structure's real capacity. The questions are how much, whether the member can be repaired at all, and what design goes onto it.
A competent crew installs it
The standard is blunt that only a competent person should repair racking. Our own or contracted crews install to the sealed design, in place, without improvising a fit.
The repaired structure is certified
Sealed by an engineer at Optim-Structure and filed against the aisle and bay, so the certificate and the steel stay attached to each other.
The OTS Portal
Report the hit from the floor
A forklift operator who clips an upright raises it from a phone — aisle, bay, photograph. It lands as a record instead of a rumour, and everything that follows, up to the certificate, stays attached to that bay.
Damage reports
Warehouse — Saint-Hyacinthe
- Out of service
Aisle 4, bay 12 — upright struck at the base
Reported from the floor · 6 May, 08:40
- Scheduled
Aisle 9, bay 3 — repair designed
Sealed drawing issued 28 April
- Certified
Aisle 2, bay 7 — repair certified
Certified 14 April · filed to the bay
Each certificate stays filed to the bay it belongs to. That is what traceable means.
What not to do
Three repairs that are not repairs
Each of these gets attempted in-house, usually with good intentions and a welder. All three are proscribed unless the manufacturer, a recognised representative or an engineer has been consulted first.
- Straightening a bent member
- Pulling a column back to plumb looks like the impact was undone. It is proscribed unless the manufacturer or an engineer has been consulted first, and it is worth understanding why: the column is straight again, and nobody on site can say what it now carries.
- Welding sections together
- A weld made in the aisle, on a cold-formed section, by somebody nobody handed a procedure. Structurally modifying a component — cutting it, splicing it, welding it — can work against its capacity and its safety, which is why the approval comes first.
- Covering or splicing the damaged section
- A plate over the crease, a sleeve cut from whatever was on the shelf, a length bolted across the fold. It puts steel over the problem without anyone establishing that the result carries what the load plaque says it carries.
None of the three is proscribed for being crude. They are proscribed because nobody has established what the result carries — the same reason a repair we install is designed before it is fitted and certified after. Racking should only be repaired by a competent person, and that is what competent means here.
When repair is the wrong answer
The same column, every year
Damage that keeps returning to the base of the same frame column is not a repair problem. The standard reads it as a signal: column guards, or a change to the rack layout, or a change to how the aisle is being driven. A fourth repair to the same upright buys you a fifth.
The other half of this is the part nobody puts on a slide, because there is no number to put on it. Prioritising maintenance can produce significant savings over the long run, and treating minor damage as acceptable risks making damage more frequent, quickly. Those hedges are the standard's own. We are not going to attach a percentage to either — we have not seen one we could defend. The direction is the claim.
FAQ
Questions we get
Because the certificate covers the kit, and the kit is not what holds your pallets up. CSA A344 says certifying a repair kit — or its individual components — in isolation is not acceptable, because the way it integrates into the damaged frame has to be fully accounted for. The same sleeve on a lightly creased column and on a badly folded one produces two different structures, and only one kind of document can tell them apart: the one written after somebody looked at the column.
The formulation that can be defended is this one: a repair is made to the manufacturer's recommendation, or by a method an engineer has approved, so as to guarantee a resistance at least equal to that of the original component. That is what the Québec prevention guide asks for, and it is where our claim stops. Anyone offering you a percentage of restored capacity is quoting a figure that does not come from a standard.
Not without consulting the manufacturer, a recognised representative or an engineer first — and that covers straightening a bent member and plating over a damaged section as much as it covers welding. Cutting, splicing and welding a rack component can work against the capacity it was designed for. The reason racking is repaired by a competent person is not skill with a torch; it is that somebody afterwards has to be able to state what the result carries.
The bay, yes — but a damaged bay graded red is out of service before anybody arrives, for reasons that have nothing to do with us. Beyond that it depends on whether the member is being repaired or replaced. A repair is installed in place wherever the layout allows; replacing a frame means taking down the bays it carries on both sides. We tell you which one applies before the day rather than on it.
The record, and where it points. CSA A344 asks for the certification of a repair to be traceable — by a mark on the repaired component, or by its precise location in the installation. Ours are filed in the OTS Portal against the aisle and the bay, beside that site's inspection and capacity reports. So the answer to "prove it" is a location an auditor can walk to and a sealed document that names it.
Related
Get started
Price your repair starting from the damage
Tell us the aisle, the bay and what hit it. That is what the engineer designs from, and what the quote is built on.