Paint Shop Planning—From Floor Plan to First Spray
Article 04 of 28
Write Down What the Paint Shop Must Do
Before someone tells you what to buy, decide what the finished project must accomplish.
A paint-shop project can go wrong long before anybody picks up a wrench. It can go wrong when the owner says, “We need a booth about this size,” and everyone treats that sentence as a complete project specification.
A booth may fit the available floor space and still be too small for the work. It may have enough airflow to satisfy one requirement but not enough heating capacity for the desired production schedule. It may spray today’s products successfully and leave no room for tomorrow’s business.
The cure is something called the Owner’s Project Requirements.
The Owner’s Project Requirements, commonly shortened to OPR, is a written description of what the owner expects the completed facility to accomplish. It defines the business need, operating conditions, performance expectations, responsibilities, limitations, and acceptance requirements.
It does not begin with a manufacturer’s model number. It begins with the work.
The Project Must Be Defined Before the Equipment Is Selected
If the owner cannot explain what the paint shop must do, a supplier can only quote what the supplier assumes the owner needs. Assumptions are cheap during the sales presentation and remarkably expensive during installation.
What the Owner’s Project Requirements Should Accomplish
A useful OPR should answer five basic questions:
- What will the paint shop process?
- How much production must it support?
- What performance and quality must it provide?
- Which limitations and requirements affect the project?
- How will the owner decide whether the completed system is acceptable?
The document does not need impressive language. It needs accurate information. A clearly written three-page requirement is more useful than a beautiful fifty-page document that avoids the hard questions.
1. Begin With the Business Reason
Explain why the project is being considered. The reason affects nearly every decision that follows.
The project may be intended to:
- Replace an aging or unreliable booth
- Increase production capacity
- Bring outsourced finishing work in-house
- Improve finish quality
- Reduce contamination or rework
- Accommodate larger vehicles or products
- Introduce a new coating system
- Improve worker safety
- Reduce emissions or energy consumption
- Meet a customer or contractual requirement
- Relocate an existing finishing operation
- Build an entirely new facility
A project intended to replace failed equipment may emphasize schedule and reliability. A project intended to support a new production contract may emphasize capacity, repeatability, documentation, and future expansion.
2. Define What Will Be Coated
Do not describe the work as “automotive,” “industrial parts,” or “general finishing” and stop there. Those descriptions are too broad for responsible equipment planning.
Document Product Dimensions
- Maximum length, width, and height
- Typical dimensions
- Maximum and average weight
- Required clearance around the product
- Doors, hoods, panels, or fixtures that must be opened
- Racks, carts, stands, lifts, or conveyors used during finishing
A booth sized only around the outside dimensions of the product may not provide adequate working room for painters, hoses, doors, platforms, or material-handling equipment.
Document Product Construction
- Steel, aluminum, plastic, composite, wood, or mixed substrates
- Open, enclosed, or complex shapes
- Recesses, cavities, seams, and difficult spray angles
- Heat-sensitive components
- Masking and grounding requirements
- Part cleanliness and pretreatment needs
Document Product Movement
- Will products be driven, rolled, carried, lifted, or conveyed?
- Which direction will products enter and leave?
- Will a forklift, crane, cart, or rail system be required?
- Where will products wait before and after coating?
- How will rejected or incomplete work leave the process?
3. Identify the Coatings and Materials
The equipment cannot be properly evaluated without accurate information about the materials that will be stored, mixed, applied, cleaned, and cured.
Document:
- Primers, sealers, basecoats, topcoats, and clearcoats
- Solventborne, waterborne, plural-component, or other coating technologies
- Reducers, activators, hardeners, solvents, and cleaning materials
- Expected coating viscosity and solids content
- Flash points and other relevant safety information
- Application equipment and required atomizing pressure
- Mixing ratios, pot life, flash time, and cure requirements
- Maximum daily, monthly, and annual material usage
- Hazardous-air-pollutant or emissions considerations
- Material-storage and temperature requirements
Current Safety Data Sheets and coating technical data sheets should be made available to the qualified professionals evaluating the project.
4. Establish Production Requirements
“We want more production” is a goal, not a production requirement.
Define the expected workload using measurable information:
- Units, vehicles, or parts per shift
- Operating hours and number of shifts
- Average and peak production
- Number of color changes
- Average time required for preparation, spraying, flashing, curing, and unloading
- Expected booth occupancy time
- Cleaning and maintenance downtime
- Seasonal production changes
- Required availability or uptime
- Expected production growth
The average production rate does not tell the entire story. A system must also handle peak demand without creating unsafe shortcuts, unacceptable quality, or permanent backlogs.
5. Define Finish-Quality Expectations
Terms such as “high quality,” “Class A finish,” and “customer acceptable” mean different things to different people. The OPR should define measurable or observable acceptance criteria wherever possible.
| Quality Area | Possible Requirement |
|---|---|
| Cleanliness | Maximum acceptable contamination, dirt, fibers, or inclusions |
| Appearance | Required gloss, texture, distinctness of image, or visual standard |
| Color | Approved sample, color tolerance, lighting, and evaluation method |
| Film Thickness | Specified wet- and dry-film-thickness ranges |
| Cure | Required part temperature, cure schedule, hardness, or solvent resistance |
| Coverage | Required hiding, edge coverage, recess coverage, or corrosion protection |
| Defects | Acceptance limits for runs, sags, orange peel, overspray, pinholes, and dry spray |
| Documentation | Records required for customer, warranty, audit, or internal quality purposes |
6. Establish Environmental Conditions
The project team needs to know the conditions under which the paint shop must operate.
- Outdoor summer and winter design temperatures
- Outdoor humidity conditions
- Required booth temperature during spraying
- Required temperature during flash and cure cycles
- Acceptable temperature and humidity variation
- Building heating and cooling conditions
- Indoor and outdoor dust or contamination sources
- Wind, weather, snow, rain, and roof-loading considerations
- Required pressure relationship between the booth and surrounding building
A booth that performs well during mild weather may struggle when outdoor temperatures reach seasonal extremes. The design conditions should reflect the actual location, not the weather on the day the proposal is prepared.
7. Document Available Utilities
Never assume that a utility exists merely because a pipe, wire, or compressor is already in the building.
Electrical
- Available voltage, phase, and frequency
- Electrical-service capacity
- Available breaker and panel capacity
- Distance from the service to the proposed equipment
- Standby power or shutdown requirements
Natural Gas or Other Fuel
- Available fuel type
- Supply pressure
- Available volume at peak demand
- Meter and regulator capacity
- Other gas-fired equipment sharing the service
Compressed Air
- Compressor capacity and duty cycle
- Available pressure at the point of use
- Air quality, dew point, oil, and moisture control
- Existing dryer, receiver, filtration, and piping capacity
- Simultaneous demand from other equipment
Water, Drainage, and Other Services
- Water supply and pressure
- Sanitary or process-drain limitations
- Wastewater-treatment requirements
- Communications and control-network requirements
- Fire-protection water availability
8. Identify Building and Site Limitations
The proposed equipment must fit the building in three dimensions and still leave room for operation, inspection, and maintenance.
Document:
- Available floor area and ceiling height
- Column spacing and structural obstructions
- Roof construction and allowable roof loading
- Existing sprinklers, lights, ducts, pipes, and utilities
- Required service and maintenance clearances
- Equipment delivery route and door dimensions
- Forklift, crane, and rigging access
- Property lines and neighboring buildings
- Outdoor exhaust and air-intake locations
- Customer, employee, and emergency-access routes
- Areas available for equipment expansion
A booth may fit on the floor and still be impossible to deliver through the available doorway. An air-makeup unit may fit on the roof and still exceed the structure’s capacity. A duct may reach the outdoors and discharge where the building’s intake pulls the exhaust back inside.
9. Define Safety and Regulatory Expectations
The OPR should identify the requirement for qualified code review, permits, approvals, equipment listings, fire protection, electrical classification, ventilation, environmental compliance, and worker-safety procedures.
It should identify responsibility for:
- Contacting the Authorities Having Jurisdiction
- Determining applicable code editions
- Preparing professional drawings and calculations
- Submitting permits and paying fees
- Providing fire-suppression design
- Preparing hazardous-location documentation
- Completing environmental applications and notifications
- Scheduling inspections and correcting deficiencies
- Training operators and maintenance personnel
- Maintaining required records after startup
10. Define Energy and Operating-Cost Goals
Purchase price is only one part of the paint shop’s cost. Exhausting heated or conditioned air can consume substantial energy. Filters, replacement parts, maintenance labor, compressed air, fuel, electricity, and production downtime continue for the life of the equipment.
The owner should establish expectations for:
- Energy efficiency
- Heat recovery or recirculation where permitted and appropriate
- Motor and burner efficiency
- Automatic operating modes
- Filter life and replacement cost
- Compressed-air consumption
- Preventive-maintenance requirements
- Replacement-part availability
- Expected equipment service life
- Estimated annual operating cost
11. Plan for Maintenance Before Installation
Maintenance should not require moving another machine, removing a wall, or placing a technician in an unsafe position.
The OPR should address:
- Access to fans, motors, bearings, burners, and control panels
- Safe filter replacement
- Roof and duct access
- Lockout and energy-isolation provisions
- Required ladders, platforms, or service clearances
- Spare-parts recommendations
- Maintenance tools and test instruments
- Availability of local service
- Required maintenance records
- Training for maintenance personnel
12. Define the Project Scope
The OPR should identify what the project includes and what it does not include. This prevents the equipment proposal from being mistaken for a complete installed project.
| Scope Area | Responsibility to Define |
|---|---|
| Equipment | Booth, air makeup, controls, mixing room, preparation areas, application equipment, and accessories |
| Freight and Unloading | Transportation, receiving, crane, forklift, rigging, storage, and damage inspection |
| Site Work | Concrete, pits, curbs, pads, walls, roof openings, structural supports, and weather sealing |
| Utilities | Electrical, gas, compressed air, water, drainage, and communication connections |
| Fire Protection | Design, permits, equipment, installation, interlocks, inspection, and testing |
| Professional Services | Architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical, environmental, and fire-protection services |
| Startup | Testing, balancing, commissioning, operator training, documentation, and acceptance |
13. Establish Schedule Requirements
The project schedule should include more than the date the owner wants to begin production.
Allow time for:
- Site investigation and measurements
- Preliminary design
- AHJ meetings
- Engineering and permit drawings
- Permit review and corrections
- Equipment manufacturing
- Utility upgrades
- Site preparation
- Freight, delivery, and installation
- Fire-protection installation
- Inspections and corrective work
- Startup, testing, balancing, and commissioning
- Operator and maintenance training
- Contingency for delays
A production commitment should not be built around the most optimistic date on the equipment proposal.
14. Define Documentation Requirements
The owner should specify which documents must be delivered before final acceptance.
- Approved permit drawings
- Final as-built drawings
- Equipment manuals
- Electrical diagrams
- Control sequences and interlock descriptions
- Airflow and balancing reports
- Burner startup reports
- Fire-suppression inspection and test records
- Equipment listing or certification information
- Warranties
- Recommended spare-parts lists
- Preventive-maintenance schedules
- Operator and maintenance training records
- Final inspection approvals
15. Decide How the Project Will Be Accepted
The owner should define acceptance before the purchase order is issued—not after the equipment has been installed.
Acceptance criteria may include:
- Required airflow and pressure measurements
- Required operating temperatures
- Heat-up or recovery time
- Successful safety-interlock testing
- Burner and combustion testing
- Lighting measurements
- Noise requirements
- Production-capacity demonstration
- Finish-quality demonstration
- Completion of training
- Delivery of required documents
- Closure of the final punch list
- Approval by applicable authorities
If the owner expects a performance result, that expectation should be written into the project requirements and carried into the equipment specification and purchase agreement.
Owner’s Project Requirements Checklist
- Business purpose of the project
- Products or vehicles to be processed
- Maximum and typical product dimensions
- Coatings, solvents, and cleaning materials
- Production rate and operating schedule
- Finish-quality expectations
- Environmental operating conditions
- Available utilities
- Building and site limitations
- Safety, code, and environmental requirements
- Energy and operating-cost goals
- Maintenance and service requirements
- Project scope and responsibility assignments
- Schedule and major milestones
- Required documentation and training
- Testing and final acceptance criteria
- Future expansion requirements
- Budget and contingency allowances
Recommended Project Document
Create a separate Owner’s Project Requirements worksheet using the sections in this article. Complete it with input from production, painters, maintenance, safety, quality, engineering, management, and the project’s qualified design professionals.
The completed document should be reviewed before final equipment selection and updated whenever an approved project change affects performance, scope, schedule, utilities, or acceptance.
Planning and Code Notice
This article provides general educational information. An Owner’s Project Requirements document does not replace professional design, engineered drawings, code analysis, permits, manufacturer instructions, or approval by the applicable Authorities Having Jurisdiction.
Paint-shop design, hazardous-location classification, ventilation, electrical work, fire protection, structural work, gas systems, environmental compliance, permitting, and equipment installation must be evaluated and completed by qualified professionals.
The Bottom Line
An Owner’s Project Requirements document gives the project a target. Without it, every supplier and contractor may be aiming at something different.
Write down what will be coated, how much must be produced, what quality is required, which limitations affect the project, what each party must provide, and how the finished system will be tested.
The objective is not to tell the engineer how to engineer or the equipment manufacturer how to manufacture. The objective is to tell the project team what success looks like.
If success cannot be described before the project begins, it will be difficult to prove after the invoices are paid.
Knowledge Check
- What is the purpose of the Owner’s Project Requirements?
- Why should equipment selection follow the definition of the process?
- Which production information should be documented?
- Why should utility capacity be verified rather than assumed?
- When should final acceptance criteria be established?
Article 05 of 28—Understanding NFPA 33 and Spray-Application Fire Protection