Category:Office Moves
An office move is judged on one number: how many working hours were lost. Get the sequence right and the answer is zero. Get it wrong and it is a week, most of it spent looking for cables.
Start with the floor plan
Before anything is packed, the new office needs a numbered floor plan: every desk, every storage unit, every printer, each with a code. Everything that moves gets a label carrying the code of the place it is going. Unpacking then becomes placement, which a crew can do without asking a single question.
This one document saves more time than any other part of the process.
The sequence
- Network and server room first. IT needs the longest runway. Racks travel in cases, patch panels are photographed before anything is unplugged, and the switch-on happens while furniture is still arriving.
- Storage and records second. Sealed, numbered crates with a signed chain of custody. Anything confidential is logged in and out by name.
- Furniture by department. Not by truckload — by department, so that a team arriving on Monday finds itself together.
- Personal effects last. Each person packs one crate, labeled with their own desk code. It is the only part of the move staff should do themselves.
Communication
Tell staff three things and repeat them: the date, what they are responsible for packing, and where they should be on Monday morning. Everything else is noise. Put the new address and the desk map on a single page and email it twice.
The Monday
Have the mover’s crew lead and one person from IT on site for the first two hours. Something will be missing, and the difference between a five-minute fix and a lost morning is whether anybody with authority is standing in the room.
