How to repaint a warehouse without closing it

A warehouse repaint is a bigger problem than a painting job. The building is usually worth more than the paint, it is usually the reason the paint is needed in the first place, and it is the one thing in the business that cannot simply close for a fortnight.

This is how the work is planned so that the site keeps running.

Decide what has to keep running, before anything else

The first conversation about a warehouse repaint is not about coatings. It is about the operation: which aisles the pickers need at 6am, where the forkifts turn, which bay has to be loaded tomorrow, and which lines cannot stop at all.

Get that written down before anyone starts. A programme built around a guess about how the site runs is a programme that will be wrong by the second week, and the wrong part is always the worst week: the one where the product is on the floor and the stock cannot be reached.

Two questions do most of the work:

• What can be handed over? Most warehouses have space that nobody uses: a mezzanine, a void, a section that is being decommissioned. Handing that over first buys you a staging area and, more importantly, buys you time.
• What is the worst week for us? Christmas shutdown, the end of a financial year, the week a contract is being audited. Painting through that week is the expensive mistake, and it is the one that is easiest to avoid by asking.

Work in zones, and agree the order before the first coat

The building is divided into zones and the zones are done one at a time. Inside a zone, the site is closed; outside it, everything carries on.

The order is decided in advance, and it is not arbitrary. It usually follows three rules:

1. Start where the site can least afford to have work happening. A corner nobody uses goes first, so the disruption is on a zone that was not generating anyway.
2. Finish where the site needs to be whole. The bay that fronts the dispatch area is done last, when the handover is close.
3. Never paint a route you are still using. If the crew has to walk through a bay they have just coated to reach the next one, the coating does not survive, and the job loses a day.

A warehouse that is zoned properly can usually keep 70 to 80 per cent of its floor area in use through the work. The number is worth agreeing at the start, because it is a promise you will both be held to.

Preparation is where the site actually stops

This is the part clients are surprised by. Painting is quiet, tidy and relatively quick. Preparation is noisy, dusty and slow, and it is the preparation that decides how long the building is out of action.

A floor that is being coated has to be ground, repaired and cleaned before the first coat goes on. That bay is closed for those days. A wall that is being prepared needs access, which usually means a boom lift or scaffold standing in the space it is serving.

If a job is going to be phased around the operation, the phasing has to follow the preparation, not the paint. Some sites find it easier to have everything done in one shutdown precisely because the preparation, not the coating, is what makes the site unusable.

Get the coating right for the use, not for the photograph

A warehouse coating is chosen against the traffic and the substrate, not against the colour in the render.

• Traffic. Forklifts with solid tyres, pallet drags and turning wheels will take the finish off a standard floor paint in months. A proper industrial system is a different product with a different price, and it is the difference between a floor that needs attention in year two and one that does not.
• Chemicals. Oil, fuel, cleaners and coolant do different things to different resins. If there is a spill history, say so before the system is specified, not after the floor has failed.
• Water. Cold storage, food processing and wash-down areas have their own requirements, and some of them require a coating that is genuinely different from the one in the dry warehouse next door.
• Slab condition. Movement cracks and settlement are common on industrial slabs, and a coating laid over a damp or moving slab fails from underneath. It then looks like a workmanship problem when it is not one.

Paint the line marking into the coating, not on top of it

Bay lines, aisle edges, pedestrian walkways and hazard zones are usually painted onto the finished floor. On a floor that is going to be driven over, that is a decision to repaint the lines in a year or two.

Applied as part of the floor system, the line marking becomes part of the coating and wears with it, so the floor and the lines are replaced together.

Get the paperwork right, because it is what protects you

Three documents matter on a job like this, and all three should exist before the first coat:

• A written programme. Dates, zones, access arrangements, and what you need to provide. If the programme is in a document, it can be referred to when something changes.
• A site-specific Safe Work Method Statement. Written and signed off before work starts. It is not paperwork for its own sake: it is the record of how the hazards on your site are being controlled, and it is what a principal contractor or an insurance assessor will ask for.
• A written coating warranty. Five years, in writing, on the work we do. Ask any painter for the warranty before the quote, not after the invoice.

When a shutdown is the better answer

Sometimes it is. If the work is a full floor strip, a structural steel coating, or a building with enough going on that a crew working around the operation costs more than the disruption of stopping, a shutdown is the cheaper and better answer. The right response is to price both ways and compare, which is why the site visit matters more than the phone call.

If you are not sure which situation you are in, that is a reasonable thing to ask a contractor in the first call. Ask us and we will tell you which one we think it is, including when the answer is the one that is less convenient for us.