4,200 sqft pick deck for a Vaughan e-comm operation.
An e-commerce fulfillment operator running a high peak-season picker count needed a dedicated pick mezzanine to separate from bulk-storage racking and integrate with a new sortation conveyor. The egress count had to handle peak shift; the deck height had to clear the existing reach trucks; the conveyor takeaway had to land in a specific dock-door alignment.
The brief
Operation was running peak-season pick from a 30,000-sqft warehouse with picking on the floor between rack aisles. The setup worked at average season but bottlenecked at peak: cross-traffic between pickers and reach trucks was a safety risk, and the pick rate was capped by aisle congestion. The fix: dedicated picking off the floor on a mezzanine, with conveyor takeaway from the deck to a sortation system at the dock end.
Constraint: the operation couldn't shut down for install. The mezzanine had to go in over scheduled long-weekend windows, in pieces, integrating with the conveyor scope landing in the same window.
What we built
- Deck size4,200 sqft
- Live load125 psf + occupant load
- DeckBar-grate (sprinkler reach to grade; pallet-drop tolerance)
- Clear height to deckmatched reach-truck spec + margin
- Column gridtypical 14 ft × 16 ft
- Egress2 stairs (occupant-load driven, OBC §3.4)
- Pallet drop1 (replenishment route from grade)
- Conveyor pass-throughEngineered opening; takeaway to sortation
- Guard42" pipe rail, full perimeter, integrated swing gates at conveyor
- FinishShop primer (interior, dry environment)
Egress at peak occupant load
OBC §3.4.2 thresholds for two means of egress are calculated from occupant load × travel distance. At the operator's peak picker count, the deck triggered the two-egress requirement, each path sized to carry its share of the occupant load at the per-occupant width factor.
Both stairs were 1100 mm clear width — above the per-occupant minimum at the calculated load — to provide margin and meet the operator's peak-week count without re-rating the deck.
The conveyor pass-through
The conveyor takeaway scope — separate trade, separate vendor — needed to land at a specific elevation and xy coordinate within our deck. Coordination at design stage included shop drawings from the conveyor vendor showing belt-tail position, foot pattern, and connection load.
Our deck framing locally reinforced around the pass-through opening, with an engineered opening through the bar-grate deck, structural toe-plate wrapping the opening, and conveyor-mount provisions in the steel frame. The conveyor install team was on-site with us for the deck-day install.
Install — phased over 2 long-weekend windows
- Window 1 (Civic Holiday weekend): column erection, primary beam, secondary beam, bracing. Deck framework structurally complete; bar-grate panels not yet set.
- Window 2 (Labour Day weekend): bar-grate decking, perimeter guard, both egress stairs, pallet drop, conveyor pass-through framing.
- Conveyor install: ran overnight on Sunday of window 2; integrated with our pass-through.
- Final commissioning: Monday morning operator walk-through; production resumed Tuesday at 6 AM.
What we'd do differently
The conveyor coordination was tight — three days of design back-and-forth between us, the conveyor vendor, and the GC to pin down the pass-through exactly. In hindsight, we'd put the conveyor vendor on the job earlier (at quote stage rather than after sign-off). It worked out, but the lead-time pressure on our drawings was unnecessary. Putting that learning into our standard quote process for projects with conveyor integration.
Outcomes
- Meaningful pick-rate improvement over the prior floor-pick baseline.
- Forklift-pedestrian cross-traffic separated structurally; safety incidents reduced.
- Operator expanded peak-season staffing on the recovered cube without expanding the building.
Client testimonial and exact post-install metrics pending publication approval.