Guide
Office relocation checklist: the order an office move happens
Updated
Most office moves that go badly went badly weeks before move day, because something with a long lead time was started late.
Six months out
- Confirm both lease dates, including any overlap you can negotiate. Overlap is the cheapest insurance in a move.
- Ask the outgoing landlord for the schedule of dilapidations position early. It has its own timetable and its own advisers, and finding out late is what turns a budget over.
- Start connectivity for the new building. Circuits are ordered, not switched.
- Get the new building surveyed for access: goods lift dimensions and booking rules, loading bay, permitted working hours.
Three months out
- Get removal quotes against a survey of both buildings, with the working hours assumption written in.
- Decide the IT sequence and who owns decommission, transport and recommission.
- Decide what is coming with you and what is being cleared, and get clearance and disposal quoted with it.
- Book crate delivery and collection dates, and check the hire clock terms.
One month out
- Confirm lift bookings, parking suspensions and any access permits at both ends.
- Circulate the labelling scheme and the packing rules to staff. A move fails on labelling more often than on lifting.
- Confirm insurance limits, including single-item limits for anything valuable.
- Confirm the waste carrier registrations and how you get the transfer notes back.
Office moving day, and the week around it
- Walk both buildings with the move manager and agree the sequence in person, not by email.
- Agree the rollback plan and the time by which the decision gets made.
- Keep one person on site at each end for the whole window with authority to make decisions.
- Do the snag walk of the old building before handing back keys, and photograph the condition.
Two lead times block everything else: connectivity into the new building, and the dilapidations position at the old one. Start both first.