Office Relocations – Planning Is Everything!

When you’re preparing for an office move, there’s a lot to think about and get sorted before you end up in the new premises. As with most things, the more preparation and planning you do, the more likely you are to make it through with minimal stress – you don’t want to be winging something as major as moving offices!

To make it easier, here are our best tips for successfully planning and executing an office relocation.

Planning

Decide a budget and get services on board
Moving office can get expensive, fast. To help relieve some of the pressure, it can be useful to set out a budget before moving which can guide the choices you make.

Some of the factors you may need to consider are:

• Removalists
• Interior design and fit out
• New furniture or disposal of unnecessary items
• IT and telecommunications install and transport
• Costs of updating address (business cards, mail redirection)
• Insurance
• Machinery and equipment transport

But every business is different, so be sure to think about what is most important for you.

By contacting your providers as soon as possible you can compare quotes to meet your needs.

Set out a timeline
When do things need to happen by? Do you need help from specialist companies? All of this needs to be factored in so things happen efficiently, with minimal disruption to your employees and business. Make sure you discuss key dates with your providers and book early, so everyone is clear on what needs to be done and when.

Determine office layout
There are many companies who can help with designing the best possible layout for your new workspace, but depending on your budget you may have to give it your best crack with a tape measure and some accurate measurements. However, if you need anything built then it’s best to call in the professionals.

When looking at the area be sure to consider the best layout for the space, where everything will fit, and whether there’s enough room for the coffee machine.

It’s really important to know where everyone will be sitting before the move happens, so desks can be unloaded first and then the correct equipment can be placed on each desk – and to include this on a floorplan or similar so everyone understands what’s happening.

Now is also a great time to figure out if there’s anything else that needs to be bought for the new space, or ditched at the old office.

Apply for any permits needed
If you require a building permit or similar to make any changes to your new office, it’s best to get these sorted early and avoid causing delays or any issues further down the line. It can take up to 10 days for most building permits, and this must be completed before work can start.

Let people know you’re moving
Be sure to let your clients, partners and suppliers know you’re moving, to reduce any inconvenience.

If you depend on deliveries from suppliers to do business, make sure you update the delivery address when you want to start receiving items at the new address. Mail redirection can also help while you get everything changed over.

 Get connections set up and tested
Internet and phone are most likely crucial to your business, so you need to be able to rely on them. We like to get these set up about 2 weeks prior to the move date so we can get in and test them, meaning we can know they’ll work when it counts.

 Pack everything up
Start packing less used items as early as possible; there is nothing worse than a last-minute packing rush, and while you’re at it make sure you label everything. It’s fairly self-explanatory, but a few extra seconds at the front end means less time wasted on unloading and figuring out what goes where in the new premises.

Executing
The success of this stage will really depend on how much planning and prep work you’ve done beforehand, so the more detail, the better!

Get everything there
Have core staff on board to help, but don’t have every employee as it can get too hectic and people end up getting the way. It can be useful to have one or two staff members at both the old and new sites, but this will depend on how hands-on the move is. Having specialist services such as an IT company can also help with handling delicate equipment and ensuring everything is safe and is connected as it should be.

Test communications gear before everyone starts work
This is where an IT company comes in really handy and can take away an unnecessary headache. You don’t want a move to happen over the weekend and then everyone comes in Monday morning with no connection and nothing plugged in. An IT company can help with ensuring everything is where it should be, that your data has been safely transferred and that everyone has access and can get on with their job. And, if any issues do arise later, you can know that if you pick up the phone and get help from someone who knows exactly what they’re talking about.

Providing the above all goes well, you can get onto the most important next step…

Celebrate!
Congratulations, you’ve made it through an office relocation! Hopefully, you and your team can now relax and enjoy the benefits of a fresh workspace while getting on with business.

If you need help with making your office relocation as smooth as possible, without IT disruptions and with minimal impacts to productivity, drop us an email or give us a call

Video Transcript

G’day everyone, Steve from activIT systems, just following up with our second video of three regarding office relocations. Last video we were talking about the communications aspect of a relocation and what you have to communicate before, during and after a move. This one’s more about how to effectively plan a relocation and actually execute it.

When it comes to planning, the really big thing is to plan well in advance and get the experts involved at this stage, so get your removalist involved, IT company, telecommunications company involved. Go through the plan with them and pick out some certain dates which things need to occur by.

One of the things we need to expect which pretty much always happens is there’s some sort of delay somewhere, usually a fit out or communications delay such as internet connection or getting a phone service up and running. Even though you may have a deadline set to get everyone out of the old office and into the new space there’s always something that throws a spanner in the works so leave yourself plenty of time to deal with those types of these things.

We’ve had a couple of clients where they’ve had really strict deadlines for relocations, and it’s getting really close to crunch time, the date’s getting closer and closer, then plans change. The real big problem with that is that all the third parties involved – removalists, IT etc – they have to reshuffle everything around, and not everyone’s going to be available to deal with these types of things straight away. So the more lead time you have for everything and the more flexible you are everything will be a lot easier and a lot less stressful.

One of the huge things we come across, especially with fitout, is that you can get building permit delays so make sure you have things like that well in advance even before picking a relocation date. In our last video, we spoke about internet connections so really important to make sure those things are lined up well in advance. We like to have an internet connection up about two weeks prior to the relocation date that way we can get in and test it, make sure its fine, and make sure the reliabilities there, you don’t want to bring everyone across to the new office space and internet drops out a couple of days later.

A really big one that we find, we’re often tasked with reinstalling PCs on peoples desks in the new place, so have a really good floor plan in place and mapped out and stick to it – who’s going to be sitting where, because when people like us come in, we want to position PCs on desks based on who’s going to be sitting there. We’ve had a few instances where things have been changed around at the last minute and it creates a lot of confusion, and no-one likes to come into their brand new shiny office and sit down at their desk with someone else’s gear there. So the better floorplan you have in place, and the more you can stick to it the better, but it all really comes down to planning and the smooth execution.

That’s pretty much it for this quick little video, next one we’re just going to be talking about things not to do and we have a big list of them, we’ll keep it to have three or four of them in the video, but we’ll have a big long blog post about the rest

Thanks for watching and stay tuned!

Are you ready to get started with planning your office move? Download your FREE complete office relocation checklist by clicking on the image below!