The request usually arrives as a small one. A new machine is coming in, or production needs another bench line, or the dispatch area has to grow, and somebody asks whether the racking along that side of the factory can be shifted two metres over. Same building, same racking, same floor. How hard can it be?

Harder than it sounds: the racking stays the same, but everything it stands on, stands under and stands beside changes. A shift inside your own factory is closer to a new installation on unchecked floor than to rearranging furniture. The checks are the same every time, and all of them can be done before anyone unbolts a beam.

If your racking is leaving the building altogether, that is a different job with its own sequence, covered in relocating pallet racking to a new warehouse. This post is about the move that goes nowhere.

Why a short move gets underestimated

When racking moves to a new unit, everybody expects to survey the new unit. When it moves two metres, the assumption is that the building was surveyed years ago. But that survey was of the old footprint. The new position has its own slab joints, its own services overhead, its own relationship to the doors and the forklift routes. None of that was checked when the racking went in, because the racking was not going there. Factories in particular carry things a plain warehouse does not: trenches, drainage channels, old machine pits, patched concrete where equipment used to be bolted down, and in some units an overhead crane.

1. The floor at the new position

This is where most shifts go wrong, because it cannot be seen from the aisle.

• Joints, trenches and patches. A base plate cannot straddle a movement joint or sit over a void and be anchored properly. Walk the new footprint with the layout in hand and look for saw-cut joints, drainage channels, covered pits and areas where concrete has been broken out and filled. Adjusting a run by a few hundred millimetres to clear a joint is normal, and cheapest on paper.
• Edges. Anchor capacity falls away near a free edge, and a factory floor has more edges than people count — trenches, pits and channels all create them.
• What is inside the slab. Where the slab may be post-tensioned, the tendons are located by scanning before anything is drilled. On an upper floor, the slab is a designed suspended floor with its own limits, and the stated floor loading still applies at the new position.
• New holes, not old ones. The concrete around a used anchor hole has been worked and may be spalled, so an anchor put back into it cannot develop its designed capacity. A shifted run is anchored into fresh holes, and the old ones are made good rather than left open for a forklift wheel or a trolley to find.

The anchoring questions in full are in anchoring pallet racking to the floor.

2. What is overhead at the new position

The top beam level was set against whatever was above the old footprint. Two metres over, that may not hold.

• Sprinkler heads. Clearance below the sprinklers sets the top of the rack, and head positions are not uniform across a building. A run moved under a lower branch line, or between two heads it used to sit clear of, may need its top level lowered.
• Lighting, ducting, cable trays and pipework. Usable height is measured to the lowest obstruction over the run, not to the roof.
• An overhead crane. Common in fabrication and engineering factories, and it sterilises the space beneath its travel. Racking that sat safely beside the crane path cannot be shifted into it.

If the top level has to come down, the configuration has changed, and that leads straight to the next point. Measuring usable height properly is set out in warehouse clear height and racking levels, and the sprinkler side in sprinkler clearance and racking approval.

3. Whether the racking comes back the same

A shift is the moment people take the chance to change things: one level fewer because of a sprinkler, one level more because the new position is higher, a longer run to use the space, a gap for a new doorway.

Each is reasonable, and each is a design change. The upright's capacity depends on the beam level configuration it was designed with, because the levels brace the frame. Move a beam level, remove one, or change the height of the first beam, and the frame's rated capacity changes without anything being damaged. So:

• If the configuration changes, the capacity is checked for the new configuration, not assumed from the old one.
• The load notices on the run are reissued to match. A notice describing the old arrangement is now wrong — see rack load notices and SWL signage.
• The layout drawing and your racking records are updated, because the next inspector, insurer or buyer of the building will work from them.

System type matters here too. Selective racking is the easiest system to reconfigure and drive-in the hardest, so a drive-in block is a bigger shift than a selective run of the same length.

4. What the move does to routes

This is the part specific to factories, because a factory has people on foot in places a warehouse does not.

• Escape routes. A run shifted two metres can close a route, create a dead-end aisle, or end up in front of a personnel door. Mark the exits and the routes between them on the new layout before anything is agreed. The logic is in escape routes in a racked warehouse.
• Fire equipment and panels. Hose reels, extinguishers and electrical switchboards have to stay accessible, and they are easy to lose behind a run that was drawn without them.
• Forklift and pedestrian crossing points. Moving racking to make room for a new production area often means the forklift aisle now runs past people working at a machine. That changes where barriers, floor marking and rack protection are needed — the new aisle ends are where the impacts will land, and they are not where the old ones were. See column guards and barriers.
• Aisle width against the truck you run today. If the shift narrows an aisle, check it against the actual truck and its turning circle, not the one you had when the racking went in.

5. The condition of the racking itself

A shift is the only time every frame is empty and reachable. That makes it the right moment to inspect, not a reason to skip it.

Check every upright as it comes down: impact damage in the bottom metre, bent or torn base plates, beams that no longer return straight, missing safety pins and locking clips. A damaged upright stood back up in a new position is still a damaged upright, now carrying stock again. Components that fail are set aside there and then, so replacements are ordered while the job can still wait for them. How damaged parts are judged is in repair, replace or de-rate.

Finish with an SS EN 15635 inspection of the re-erected runs so you have a written baseline at the new position, graded green, amber and red. Our typical cost is S$3.50 to S$6.00 per upright frame, with a S$1,200 minimum per site visit — details on the rack inspection page.

Running the shift while the factory keeps working

The constraint is floor space, not labour. Racking cannot be taken down with stock on it, and the stock has to go somewhere while the run is moved — often into the very area the run is moving to, which is the circular problem that needs solving first.

Drilling and anchoring make dust and noise, and the area has to be genuinely clear, so this step often lands outside production hours even when the rest of the work does not. If the machine that caused the move has a delivery date, work backwards from it: the racking has to be out of the way and anchored before the machine arrives, not on the same day. How zone-by-zone and after-hours work is planned is in installing racking without shutting the warehouse.

When not to shift it

• When the move is really the first step of a bigger re-layout. Shifting one run now and another next year produces a floor designed piece by piece. Design the whole floor once, then move the racking in phases to that plan.
• When the racking is the wrong class for what it now holds. If production has changed what is stored, the load case has changed, and moving under-rated racking two metres does not fix it.
• When inspection shows more damage than is worth carrying forward. Sometimes part of the run moves and part is replaced. It is better to know that before the machine arrives.

What to have ready before you ask for a quote

• A photo or sketch of the current layout with the run to be shifted marked, and where it needs to go.
• The reason for the shift, and the date driving it — a machine delivery, a new line, a lease or a customer.
• The racking type, approximate number of bays and levels, and whether load notices are on the runs.
• Anything you know about the floor at the new position: trenches, pits, joints, patched areas, or an upper-floor slab.
• What is overhead: sprinklers, lighting, ducting, an overhead crane.
• Whether the configuration is also changing — levels added or removed, or a longer or shorter run.
• Your forklift type and the hours the area can be cleared.

We quote a shift after seeing both the racking and the floor it is moving to. There is no per-bay figure for it that would be honest before that visit.

The short version

• A shift inside the same factory puts old racking on new floor, under new services, beside new routes. Survey the new position as if it were a new installation.
• Check joints, trenches, pits and slab edges at the new footprint; drill fresh anchor holes and make the old ones good.
• Check sprinkler clearance, lighting and any overhead crane path above the new position.
• Any change to beam levels is a change to capacity: check it, reissue the load notices, update the records.
• Re-draw escape routes, fire equipment access and forklift crossings; inspect every frame while it is down.

If you need racking moved to make room inside your own factory, WhatsApp us on 9107 2601 — tell us what has to move, why, and by when, and we will tell you what the new position needs before anything is unbolted. What we install is on our racking systems page, and the full scope of work on our services page.