5 Mistakes to Avoid When Ordering Commercial Railings

After 30+ years and over 1,000 projects, we've watched general contractors and project managers make the same handful of mistakes when ordering commercial railings. Here are the five we see most often — and how to avoid them.

Mistake #1: Ordering too late

Railings have a 6–10 week lead time. That includes shop drawing review (1–2 weeks), engineering and stamping (1 week), fabrication (3–4 weeks), and finishing (1–2 weeks). If you wait until you need them to order, you're going to delay handover.

Order when the structural drawings are 90% complete. That gives us enough information to engineer the embed plates and start fabrication of the typical conditions. Custom or specialty items can come later — but the bulk should be in the queue early.

Mistake #2: Ignoring the embed plate spec

If you don't cast embed plates into the slab during the pour, you'll be drilling and chemical-anchoring into a finished slab. That triples the install time and risks hitting post-tension cables. Get the embed plate layout from your railing supplier and into the structural drawings BEFORE the pour.

Mistake #3: Specifying without measuring

The architectural drawings show idealized geometry. The actual building has tolerances — slabs are out of square, floor heights vary by 5–10mm, columns aren't always plumb. If your railing is fabricated to the architectural drawings exactly, half of it won't fit.

We do a site survey before fabrication on every major project. The cost is small. The savings on rework are massive.

Mistake #4: Letting price drive the spec

If you have three quotes and the lowest is 30% below the others, the lowest bidder is using lower-grade materials, skipping engineering, or planning to use less qualified installers. That gap reappears later as warranty claims, finish failures, or code re-work.

The right approach: drop the highest and lowest, then negotiate on the middle. That's where the actual market price lives.

Mistake #5: Not requiring stamped drawings

We've covered this in detail elsewhere on the blog. Short version: if your supplier can't provide P.Eng. or OIQ-stamped shop drawings for your project, walk away. You will fail inspection.