E-commerce & Fulfillment
The layout movesfaster than the paperwork
Pick faces get rebuilt around whatever is selling, and a run that was bulk storage in the spring is a pick module by October. Inspection and re-certification for fulfillment floors across Québec, scheduled around peak rather than through it.
Reconfiguration
The load plaque is the tell
Worth stating plainly, because it is the one place where how a fulfillment centre works and what CSA A344 says do not fit together on their own.
Reconfiguring racking or moving beams is not permitted without an engineer's approval or certified documents, because it can create an overload condition. Any reconfiguration of the system requires the structure to be re-certified by an engineer. Read literally against a building that re-slots every quarter, that is a great deal of engineering — and pretending otherwise on a website helps nobody.
What makes it workable is that a fulfillment floor does not change at random. It changes in campaigns: a zone at a time, on a slotting cycle, with a date somebody already owns. A re-rate attached to that cycle costs a planning conversation. A re-rate discovered afterwards costs an aisle in November.
The load plaque is the tell. It states the capacity of the bay and the maximum unit load the beams may take, and it points at the drawings that establish both. Move the beams without touching it and the plaque is still perfectly legible — it is simply describing a rack that is no longer in the building.
Inspection frequency
Five reasons to revisit the interval
Annual is the general case. The CSST prevention guide lists five changes that call for the interval to be reviewed, and a fulfillment centre produces all five in an ordinary year.
- A change in work organisation
- A second shift for peak, a new pick path, agency crews who learned the building last week. The racking did not change. The number of chances to hit it did.
- A change in the work environment
- A zone re-slotted, an aisle narrowed to gain positions, a staging area moved to exactly where the trucks now turn.
- A change in the loads handled
- A new category on a different pallet, a supplier shipping heavier cases, a bulk line arriving on something the beams were never sized around.
- A change in handling equipment
- Rented trucks for peak, a different mast, a different height of first contact. Column guards chosen for the old fleet can end up sitting under the impact rather than in front of it.
- More damage than last year
- The one item on the list that is a result rather than a cause. Where minor damage is treated as acceptable, the standard warns that the frequency risks climbing quickly — which makes a rising count the cheapest early signal you have, provided somebody is counting.
Storage systems
Systems that survive being rebuilt
Density is not the objective here; recovering from a change is. The systems that suit a fulfillment floor are the ones that can be re-slotted without being re-engineered.
- Single-deep selective for the long tail — every pallet reachable, the lowest density, the simplest change
- Pallet flow where the fast movers need FIFO and the aisle count has to come down
- Push-back where rotation can be LIFO and the lanes load from one aisle
- A mezzanine when pick and returns need floor area the building does not have sideways
- Row-end protection where the traffic concentrates — on a fulfillment floor, the same three corners every year
The OTS Portal
One record per configuration
Every capacity report is filed against the layout it describes, per site and per year, with the current one flagged. When the next reconfiguration gets planned, it starts from the last sealed position rather than from somebody's memory of it.
Reports by configuration
Fulfillment centre — Mirabel
- Current
Capacity report — aisles 12 to 18, 2026
Sealed after the January re-slot
- Archived
Capacity report — aisles 12 to 18, 2024
The layout it replaced
- Archived
Annual inspection — 2025
Sealed 4 September 2025
Filed per site and per year. The flagged one describes the configuration you are running.
FAQ
Questions we get
For a genuine reconfiguration, yes — moving beams is not permitted without an engineer's approval or certified documents, and a reconfigured system has to be re-certified. What changes the cost is timing. Batched with your slotting cycle and scoped from the drawings, a re-rate is a planning item. Found during an audit, after a peak, or in an insurer's question following an incident, it is an emergency with an aisle attached.
Common, and it starts with a capacity report rather than an inspection. Racking designed to something other than the standard CSA points at for steel design, and carrying no engineer's seal, has to be examined — and where nobody can say which standard a run was built to, you are in the same practical position. Used and mixed components get the same treatment: examined component by component, doubtful ones discarded, capacities established before the run goes back into service.
Most of it. Inspection is done with the racking loaded and works around a building that keeps running; the measuring for a re-rate disturbs even less. Two things want the aisle: a section that has to come off load before a permanent deformation can be measured, and anything graded red, which comes out of service on the day. The rest is calendar work, and the honest advice is to put it before peak rather than into it.
Related
Before the next change
Plan the re-rate with the re-slot
Tell us what is changing and when. It is a cheaper conversation before the beams move than after.