Pictured above: heavy-duty racking with blue uprights loaded with large cable drums in an industrial unit, from our project archive. The photo is here for the steel, not the stock — the questions below apply to any loaded bay.

Most warehouse managers know the racking is supposed to be inspected. What almost nobody is told is what an inspection actually looks at, or what separates a bay you can keep using from one that has to be emptied today. That gap matters, because the wrong call costs money either way: unload a bay that was fine and you lose pallet positions you are paying rent on; keep loading a bay that was not and you are one forklift knock away from a collapse.

This is a plain-English walk through what a rack inspection flags and why, so you know what to expect before anyone walks your floor — and what you can look at yourself in the meantime.

What a rack inspection actually is

We inspect under SS EN 15635, the standard for storage equipment safety inspection. It sets out how racking in use should be inspected, how damage is graded by severity, and how quickly each level has to be dealt with. In practice that means two things running together: a detailed inspection by someone competent to judge racking, done at a set interval or after an incident, and routine visual checks by your own team in between. The formal inspection is the one that produces a document; the in-house look is what catches a fresh knock before the next formal visit. Our recommendation is an annual inspection, and an additional inspection after any impact.

The output is a written report with a green, amber and red triage and remediation cost estimates. Green, amber and red are not a grading exercise for its own sake — each one carries a different instruction, and the whole point of the report is to tell you which bays keep working and which stop. More on that below.

What the inspection does not do is invent numbers. The measurement that decides whether a dent is acceptable, and the load a bay is allowed to carry, come from the inspection report and the rack's own load notice, not from a rule of thumb. Where a specific figure is needed, the survey settles it against the actual steel in front of us.

What gets flagged, and why it matters

Impact damage to uprights and braces

This is the big one. An upright is a compression member: it carries the whole load path down to the floor, and its strength depends on staying straight. A dent or a bow is not cosmetic — it changes how the member buckles, so the capacity can drop in a step rather than in proportion to how bad the damage looks. A leg that looks "only a bit bent" can have lost far more than a bit of its rating. The diagonal and horizontal braces matter for the same reason: they hold the frame square, and a buckled brace leaves the upright less supported than it was designed to be. What to do about a damaged leg — repair, replace or de-rate — is a decision in its own right, covered in a bent racking upright: repair, replace or de-rate.

Missing or dislodged beam safety pins

Every beam should be locked to the upright with a safety pin or clip. It is there to stop a beam being lifted out of its connector when a forklift catches it on the way out. Pins go missing over the years — knocked out, or never replaced after a beam was moved — and an unpinned beam can be flicked loose without anyone noticing until a pallet drops. They are cheap and quick to put right, which is exactly why a missing pin is a finding you want to hear about early.

Beams out of level and frames out of plumb

Plumbness — whether the frames stand vertical — is one of the things we check directly. A frame leaning past what it should is a sign of a floor-fixing problem, an overloaded run, or accumulated impact. Beams that no longer sit level, or that stay sagging after the pallets come off, have yielded and are replaced rather than left. A beam is meant to spring back; one that does not is finished.

Baseplates and anchors

Where the upright meets the slab is a part people forget exists. The baseplate spreads the load onto the floor and the anchor bolt holds the frame down. A bent baseplate, a missing or loose anchor, or a frame that has been packed up with an odd bit of steel are all things an inspection picks up, because the load path is only as good as its connection to the floor. What a sound floor fixing looks like is set out in anchoring pallet racking to the floor.

Overloaded or wrongly loaded bays

Racking is designed for a load case: so many pallets per beam level, of a certain weight, sitting evenly. Real floors drift from that — an extra pallet squeezed on, the heaviest stock on the wrong level, loads hanging over the front. An inspection flags loading that does not match what the rack was built for, because a bay can be in perfect condition and still be unsafe simply because of what is on it. Remember too that the real-world rating is 70 to 80 per cent of the catalogue figure once impact, off-centre loading and corrosion are allowed for.

Missing load notices

If there is no load notice on the run, nobody on the floor knows the limit, and the inspection will say so. The sign is what turns the designed rating into something a driver can actually follow. What one should state, and why so many warehouses do not have one, is in rack load notices: the sign your warehouse is probably missing.

Damaged decking, and changes made since installation

Where there is decking — plywood, mesh or steel panels — split, sagging or missing boards get flagged, because a gap is where a carton or a foot goes through. An inspector also looks for changes made since the rack went in: beams moved to a new height, a run extended, a different pallet type now going in, or a different truck now working the aisle so the aisle widths no longer suit the forklift actually being driven. Racking that has quietly been re-configured is not the racking that was signed off, and that is one of the most common things a first inspection turns up.

Green, amber, red: what the report is actually telling you to do

The triage in the report is the part you act on. In plain terms:

• Green — no action needed beyond normal use and the routine visual checks.
• Amber — use it, but the run needs attention and the standard sets out how quickly it has to be dealt with; it wants watching in the meantime. Amber is the early warning. If the same spot gets hit again, it becomes red.
• Red — stop. Unload the affected bay, and often the bays either side, and take it out of use until it is put right. This is the "unload this bay now" call.

The reason the distinction is worth getting right is money. "Use it but monitor" keeps your pallet positions working while a repair is planned. "Unload now" costs you that space immediately — but it is the cheap option next to a collapse that takes out a run of stock, the forklift and possibly the driver. Where a finding sits between the two is exactly the judgement you are paying a competent inspector for, and it is why the answer comes from measurement and the load notice, not from how alarming the dent looks.

What you can check yourself this week

You do not need to wait for a formal inspection to do the routine visual part. Walking the floor with these in mind will tell you whether you should bring the inspection forward:

• Look along each run at eye level and from the end — are any frames leaning, or any legs dented, especially at the aisle ends and corners where forklifts turn?
• Check that every beam has its safety pins in place.
• Look for beams that sag when loaded, or that stayed bent after unloading.
• Check the baseplates and anchors at floor level for damage or looseness.
• Confirm there is a load notice on each run and that what is loaded matches it.
• Note anything that has been moved or changed since the rack was installed.

Anti-collision posts at the aisle ends and high-traffic corners are worth adding where the hits keep landing — they catch the knock before it reaches the upright and extend the service life of a run considerably.

The short version

• An inspection is a competent-person check plus routine in-house visual checks, under SS EN 15635 principles, producing a written green/amber/red report.
• The main things flagged: impact damage to uprights and braces, missing beam safety pins, frames out of plumb and beams out of level, baseplate and anchor problems, overloaded or wrongly loaded bays, missing load notices, damaged decking, and changes made since installation.
• A dented upright is not cosmetic — capacity can drop in a step, not gradually.
• Amber means "use it but plan the fix and watch it"; red means "unload this bay now".
• The measurement thresholds and the allowed load come from the inspection report and the rack's load notice, not a rule of thumb.

If you want your racking inspected, or you have a bay you are not sure about, WhatsApp us on 9107 2601 with your racking type and roughly how many bays, and we will tell you honestly whether it needs a full inspection or just a look at one bay. What SS EN 15635 covers and how we run an inspection is set out on our rack inspection page, and the range of racking we work with is on our pallet racking page.

Related reading: a bent racking upright: repair, replace or de-rate · rack load notices · anchoring pallet racking to the floor