Industrial unit alterations in Toronto. Offices, washrooms, new walls.

Yes. Toronto Building lists adding or removing walls (changing room sizes or uses) and installing or modifying heating or plumbing among the work that needs a permit. Industrial interior alterations of up to 300 m², with no change in use, no change in patron area, no active permit for the building shell and no heritage approval needed, can go through Express Services, where the City's goal is an examiner's review within three days of intake. Starting before the permit adds a City surcharge of half the permit fee, at least $214.79.

It depends on the whole building and on what the work touches. In an industrial building of up to three storeys and 600 m² gross area, neither the Architects Act nor the Professional Engineers Act requires one, unless the building is designed to house, or is part of, a process, apparatus or facility whose design is engineering work; then an engineer designs it. In a bigger building, the Architects Act needs no architect to design interior work that leaves the structure, fire separations and fire safety systems, the main entrance and public corridors, exits and exterior walls alone and adds no mezzanine; beyond that, an architect or engineer designs it. That interior exception is in the Architects Act only: the Professional Engineers Act has no matching one outside a dwelling unit, and the Building Code lists the alteration of an industrial building past those limits as one an architect or professional engineer reviews during construction. So in a bigger building we confirm with Toronto Building, before drawing starts, whether an architect or engineer must design, seal or review any part. In any building, an engineer designs racking with walkways. Under the Building Code Act, the City's chief building official issues a permit unless, among other things, the law requires an architect's or engineer's design and the work was not so designed.

A demising wall built as a fire separation between the two (45 minutes in a Part 9 building, 1 hour or in some cases 45 minutes in a Part 3 one), and a look at loading. In an employment industrial zone, Toronto's zoning counts loading spaces for each industrial unit (the part of the building one owner or tenant controls) from that unit's interior floor area: for manufacturing or warehouse use, none under 100 m², one small Type C space from 100 m², one Type B from 500 m² and one large Type A from 1,000 m² (two from 5,000 m²), subject to any site-specific exception or older zoning by-law that still applies to the address. In a building over three storeys or 600 m² gross area, a new fire separation takes the work outside the Architects Act's interior exception, so an architect or engineer designs it.

With a permit: Toronto lists new doors or windows where there were none, and enlarging or moving existing ones, among the work that needs one, and outside houses even replacing a window or door does. The structure around the opening (the lintel or frame that carries the wall above) is designed by a professional engineer or, in a building small enough to need neither an architect nor an engineer, a designer registered in the Building Structural class (not a class we hold). The Building Code also caps the total area of openings in a wall that faces a property line, by how far the wall sits from it (its limiting distance). In a building over three storeys or 600 m² gross area, work on an exterior wall is outside the Architects Act's interior exception, so an architect or engineer designs it.

It can be done, but it changes more than the floor plan. A mezzanine (a partial floor built within the height of a storey) is not counted as a storey if mezzanines take up no more than 10% of the floor area (and of the suite), or no more than 40% of the room's open area with the space above left open: no walls higher than 1,070 mm, apart from an enclosed room of up to 10% of that open area, such as a small office, that does not block the view between the open space above the mezzanine and the room. A second mezzanine level counts as a storey. In a Part 9 building, its area is added to the floor area of its storey when the occupant load is worked out; it is always added to the City's fee area. Its structure is designed by a professional engineer or, in a building small enough to need neither an architect nor an engineer, a designer registered in the Building Structural class (not a class we hold), and in a building over three storeys or 600 m² gross area it is outside the Architects Act's interior exception.

Racking with platforms or walkways for people does, in any building: a professional engineer designs it and reviews it being built, the floor area needs sprinklers to NFPA 13, and each walkway level needs at least two exits with few exceptions. Racking with no platforms or walkways is outside the Building Code's definition of a shelf and rack storage system, so those rules do not apply to it; whether it belongs in your permit is something to settle with Toronto Building before the application goes in.

Not necessarily: the Building Code counts subsidiary occupancies that are an integral part of the principal one as part of it. Where offices are a separate major occupancy, the Code's Part 3 table asks for no fire separation between them and medium- or low-hazard industrial space, and 3 hours from high-hazard space; separate tenants still need the separation between suites. Office is on the list of permitted uses in Toronto's E (employment industrial) zone, though any address can carry its own exceptions. In a building over three storeys or 600 m² gross area, the design must come from an architect or engineer while no other use takes up more than 600 m² (apart from interior work within the Architects Act's exception); past that, from an architect and an engineer, though an engineer may still design the industrial part. Where offices make up at least 10% of a mixed floor area, the City may charge that area at the office rate ($12.45/m²) or the industrial rate ($11.53/m²).

The Building Code lists which changes need a permit even with nothing built: among them, low-hazard to medium-hazard industrial, medium- or low-hazard industrial to high-hazard industrial, and industrial space to a shop, a restaurant or other assembly use, or homes. A change from one industrial use to low-hazard industrial, from high- to medium-hazard, or from medium- or low-hazard industrial to offices is not on the Code's list, as long as the whole suite changes. Toronto Building's own page goes further: “Even if no construction is proposed, if a change of use is proposed a building permit is required”, so we confirm with the City first. When the alteration permit includes the new use, it covers the change, but Express Services do not take a change in use. Interior conversions to a use the zoning already permits are exempt from site plan approval up to 1,000 m² of altered floor area, unless the conversion also includes a drive-through, an entertainment place of assembly, a place of assembly, a place of worship or a transportation use. Between industrial uses, the exemption applies only where no asphalt, cement or concrete batching plant, recovery or recycling facility, salvage yard or waste transfer station is involved and, where Zoning By-law 569-2013 applies, no use it permits only with conditions. Site plan approval is still required where the Official Plan calls for a road widening, and the City may require it in other cases, such as a site within 300 m of a railway line. Our change of use page covers the rest.