Shutdown-coordinated install. Land the window without drift.
Most industrial mezzanine and stair installs happen during scheduled facility shutdowns — typically a 2-to-5 day window when production stops, the floor clears, and the structural work goes in. The window is the single most expensive constraint on the project; missing it costs the client far more than the install itself. Here's the discipline that keeps the install on time.
The three things that move install timelines
- Site conditions that didn't match the drawing. Existing column lines off by a few inches; floor flatness worse than measured; overhead obstructions not on the building drawings. Most install delays trace to this.
- Site logistics — access and rigging. Truck delivery routes blocked by the building's tenant; forklift unavailable; lift not reaching where it needs to. Solvable but only if planned for.
- Coordination with adjacent trades — concrete pour timing, sprinkler relocation, electrical conduit routing. Each trade has a critical-path step; if one slips, the install slot closes.
Site measure addresses #1; install plan addresses #2 and #3. Both go on the drawing alongside the structural design.
Pre-install verification (the day before)
The day before a shutdown install, we do a verification walk. The point is to catch anything that's changed since site measure — and there's almost always something. Typical checklist:
- Existing column locations confirmed against the drawing (we string-line check).
- Slab condition at column base locations — no surprise expansion joints, no surface damage.
- Overhead clearance at each beam location confirmed.
- Truck access confirmed for delivery; rigging path confirmed inside.
- Forklift / lift availability confirmed with the facility.
- Hot-work permit secured if the install requires welding (most don't on bolt-together; some do on field-welded retrofits).
- Adjacent trades' schedules confirmed against ours.
This walk is the difference between an install that hits the window and one that doesn't.
Rigging plan as part of the drawing
Every Span Line install drawing has a rigging plan section: the order of pieces, the lift path for each, the staging area layout, and the install sequence. The plan isn't generic; it's drafted for the specific building. Why on the drawing rather than separate? Because it has to match the structural design — beam depth determines lift weight, column placement determines lift-radius, deck framing determines piece sequence. Drafting them together avoids the day-of problem where the structural drawing and the rigging plan don't agree.
The shutdown timeline
For a typical 6,000-sqft single-tier storage mezzanine in a 24-ft-clear warehouse, the install timeline is:
- Day 1 morning: staging — material delivery, lay-down per piece sequence, lift / forklift positioning, safety perimeter.
- Day 1 afternoon: column erection — anchored to slab per stamped baseplate detail.
- Day 2: primary beam installation, secondary beam, bracing.
- Day 3: deck installation, perimeter guard, access stair.
- Day 4 morning: guard infill, kick-plate, cleanup, sign-off walk with facility manager.
- Day 4 afternoon: demobilize.
For B-deck + concrete decks, the concrete pour is typically a separate day after the steel is set; we coordinate the concrete contractor, but the pour itself is their scope.
What you can do as the buyer
If you're the facility manager or GC running the shutdown, three things help us hit the window:
- Confirm the shutdown window in writing — start time, end time, contingencies. We plan to that window; if it's flexible, our plan is flexible.
- Identify your single point of contact — one person we call when something needs a decision. Avoids the "is it Joe or is it Mike" delay at install.
- Confirm forklift / lift availability — if the facility has on-site equipment we can use, we save mobilization time. If we're bringing equipment in, the access path needs to be clear.
What we won't do
We won't quote a shutdown install without a pre-install verification walk built into the schedule. We've seen too many drift situations where the install was supposed to happen the day after sign-off, and the drawing-vs-building delta wasn't caught until the lift was in the building. The verification walk costs an hour; skipping it can cost days.