How to Minimize Downtime During a Professional Workspace Transition

Relocating your office is more than just getting your stuff from A to B. It’s a chance to change a whole host of things: systems, ways of working, equipment, bills. And it’s incredibly disruptive.

Treat It Like A Project, Not A Move

The most common error companies make is to entrust the move to whoever is currently the least busy. This leads to fragmented decisions, vendor deadlines being missed, and no one taking responsibility for the final result.

Instead, appoint a dedicated transition committee at least three months in advance, with one project manager who makes the final calls. This person is responsible for the schedule, the relationships with vendors, and internal updates. All information goes through this project manager. If there is no single accountable person, you run the risk of having three people assume that someone else has secured the installation date for the internet.

Create a project tracker with clear deadlines, and have regular follow-ups to check the progress, focusing on the tracker to ensure continuous work and to identify and remove any obstacles early.

IT Goes First, Everything Else Follows

Poorly prepared IT infrastructure is the main culprit for unexpected downtime after the move. This downtime commonly increases the delay of the overall move by 1.5 business days (International Facility Management Association).

No surprises there. We’re all familiar with that scenario: The servers show up, but the network cabling isn’t ready or fails its certification. Someone plugs in your new VoIP phones but forgets to order service from the ISP. Nobody can use email or access shared files for the first week of the new office… and you lose your mind.

The solution is simple: Sequence your IT infrastructure first. The internet connection, the phone system, the servers – all of it needs to be up and running in the new space before that first chair is lifted onto the moving truck. Overlap active ISP connections for a couple of weeks by running current and new locations in parallel. You’re going to pay double for a little while, but it’ll be the best money you ever spent.

Data migration is part of this workstream; if you’re moving from local servers to cloud servers or new drives, make sure the "finished and verified" date is two weeks before the move. Don’t wait to test your backups until your entire business is coming back online in a new location.

Move In Phases, Not All At Once

Relocating an entire office in one day is a risky endeavor. A phased relocation, where departments are moved over time, ensures that important business functions can continue working during the move.

A good rule of thumb is to start with your non-client-facing departments. Back-office operations, internal teams, and administrative personnel can be without their normal resources for a while without impacting revenue. Once this portion of your staff is settled in their new environment, move the client-facing teams.

Schedule the physical moves during off-peak hours where possible. A weekend or overnight relocation allows your IT team the time needed to ensure everything is up and running before the rest of your team digs in for the day.

Let Professionals Handle The Physical Execution

Time is the most precious asset of your internal team during a relocation. An operations manager who dedicates time to coordinating the reservation of elevators or searching for computer monitors that have gone missing is a member of the team who is not dedicating time to ensuring the business continues to function.

With a professional office moving company taking care of the physical transport of your office, your people can focus entirely on business operation. A specialist in commercial moving will provide a pre-move assessment of your assets, manage the transport and logistics of your heavier equipment, and even use specialized systems to track your assets while they are in transit. Those specialist services aren’t a luxury, they’re risk prevention.

Bring your vendor into the discussion early. The planning meetings that take place two months before your move date are infinitely more valuable than the ones that take place over the two days beforehand.

Use Remote Protocols As A Transition Buffer

Working remotely is not only necessary during a pandemic, but it also has clear advantages when relocating offices. Provide your team with the essential tools they need for cloud collaboration before the relocation even kicks off, and then plan for them to work remotely for a day or two during the move.

This will help your move in two important ways. First, it will keep unnecessary people away from the move site, helping the move team work quickly and safely. Second, it won’t disrupt your projects and deadlines just because your team isn’t able to make it into the office for a few days.

Make sure all remote access, VPNs, and program logins are still active and valid well before leaving the old office.

Day One Should Be Scripted

Having 40 people figuring out logistics like parking, security access, and IT issues on their first morning at a new office can really kill the excitement. That’s why the best Day One experience ever is a genuinely boring Day One.

In the week before Day One, send out a document that includes all the information everyone needs on their first day: where to park, how to get into the building, who to call for security access, IT login details, emergency contact information, etc. Then, on Day One, just watch everyone show up and immediately get to work.

Plan For Decommissioning From The Start

The previous office doesn’t automatically shut down on moving day. Decommissioning, which involves preparing the workspace for return in accordance with lease agreements, includes many details and also needs to be planned well in advance. Make sure your project plan includes time for decommission planning, so you can schedule and track tasks like coordinating mover surplus, ordering extra boxes and tape to clear out old stuff in work areas, forwarding mail, and sending change-of-address notifications for anything that needs to be stored, destroyed, or redistributed.

The companies that come out of an office move without a significant productivity hit aren’t lucky. They planned it like it mattered, because it does.