Warehouse Remodeling

Offices and break rooms built inside the warehouse

Most warehouses start with a small front office and a lot of open floor. As a business grows, it needs a dispatch room near the dock, a break room for the crew, a restroom closer to the back, or a manager's office with a window onto the floor. We build these as rooms inside the building: framed walls, doors, ceilings where you want them, and finishes that suit how each room will be used.

A room inside a warehouse still has to meet code. Lighting, heat, ventilation and egress all count, and a break room with a sink means a licensed plumber and a drain. A mezzanine office is a structural project with its own loads, stairs and railings, and it usually needs drawings from an engineer before the building department will review it.

We walk the building with you and the person who runs the floor before anything is drawn, because the best spot for an office on paper is sometimes right where the forklifts turn.

Offices inside a warehouse also need to keep the warehouse out. Insulated walls and a ceiling over the room hold the heat in during a New England winter and keep the forklift noise out, and a window onto the floor lets a supervisor see the work without standing in it.

Overhead doors and loading changes

Adding an overhead door, widening one or closing one up is a common warehouse change. Cutting a new opening in a masonry or steel-framed wall means a header or lintel sized for the load above it, and that usually starts with an engineer's detail. Closing an opening means framing, sheathing and siding that tie into the existing wall and keep the weather out.

Dock-height changes, new ramps and bumpers, and the slab at the door all affect how trucks back in and how pallets roll. We coordinate the door installer, the concrete work and the licensed electrician for operators and lights, and we plan the change so you are never without a working door on a day trucks are scheduled.

Door changes are also a chance to deal with what the old door was doing wrong: a rotted jamb, a bent track, a gap at the slab where water and snow blow in all winter. We fix those while the opening is apart, and the opening is closed up tight at the end of every day so your stock is never left open to rain or theft.

Our deliveries are scheduled around your inbound trucks, and our vehicles stay out of the dock apron and the turning lanes.

Slab repairs under racking and forklift traffic

Warehouse slabs take a pounding from forklifts, pallet jacks and loaded racking every working day. Joints break down at the edges, cracks open where racking legs sit, and low spots collect water near the doors. Some of it is cosmetic. Some of it is the slab telling you it is moving. We look at the pattern before recommending a fix, because patching a crack that keeps growing is money spent twice. Sometimes the honest answer is to watch a crack for a season before touching it, and we will tell you when that is the case.

Repairs come in different sizes. Joint edges can be cut out and filled with a material made for forklift wheels. Broken sections can be saw-cut and replaced, with the base underneath checked first. In Massachusetts, slabs near overhead doors also deal with frost and with water tracked in all winter, and that shapes how a repair is detailed.

Slab work needs the area empty and cured before traffic returns, so it gets scheduled into the operation section by section, with the floor manager agreeing which bays come out of use and when.

Where a slab has failed near a drain or along the building edge, the cause is sometimes water from a roof downspout or a broken drain line, and we chase that before pouring new concrete.

Demising walls when one building becomes two

Owners often split a large warehouse into two or more units to lease. A demising wall is more than a partition. Depending on the use on each side, it may need a fire rating that runs from the slab to the roof deck, with every penetration sealed. Each new unit needs its own exits, and often its own utilities and services, which the licensed trades and the utility companies handle.

We build the wall to the rating the drawings call for and keep watch on it as other trades pass through, because a rated wall with an open hole around a pipe does not pass inspection. The building department reviews the new layout, and for most demising projects a design professional prepares the plans we build from.

Splitting a building also means thinking about who will use each side. A unit leased to a business with customers needs an entrance, signage and parking that work for that, while a unit used purely for storage may need little more than a door and a dock. We help you think it through before the wall goes up.

Planning the work around inventory and trucks

A warehouse earns its money by moving goods, so the work fits the operation, not the other way around. Before we start, we sit down with whoever runs the floor and map out which bays need to stay clear, when trucks arrive, and where materials and dumpsters can sit without blocking anything.

Work zones get barricaded and marked so forklift drivers know where we are. Dust from cutting and drywall stays behind plastic where stock is stored nearby. The site gets cleaned at the end of each shift, and you hear from us before anything changes the schedule you are planning around.

Our deliveries are scheduled around your inbound trucks, and our vehicles stay out of the dock apron and the turning lanes. When the work is done, we walk it with you and the floor manager, test every door, light and lock, and finish anything that is not right before we leave. If its not right, Steve wont put his name on it.

See the rest of our commercial work, or browse the gallery for rooms we have finished.