The cost of a commercial move is rarely the mover's invoice. It is the days the business cannot operate — staff paid to stand around, orders unprocessed, phones unanswered. A well-run office relocation is designed around that number, and almost all of the planning is about sequencing rather than carrying.
The useful mental shift: you are not moving a building's contents. You are moving the ability to work, and it has to land running.
Start twelve weeks out, not four
Commercial moves have dependencies with long lead times, and they are mostly outside the mover's control. Internet provisioning at the new premises is the usual critical path and routinely takes six to eight weeks.
Work backwards from the first trading day at the new address and identify what must be true before it:
- Connectivity live and tested
- Workstations functional
- Phones answering
- Staff knowing where to go and what to do
Everything else can follow.
Appoint one person to own it
Not a committee. A single coordinator with authority to make decisions on the day, plus one named contact per department who knows what their area actually needs.
The departmental contacts matter more than people expect. The coordinator will not know that the finance team cannot close the month without a specific cabinet, or that one machine on the floor needs a dedicated circuit. Ask each area what would stop them working, and plan backwards from the answers.
Survey the destination before you plan the move
Measure and photograph the new premises, then produce a floor plan showing where every desk, cabinet and machine goes. Label both the plan and the destination itself.
Check the things that stop a move dead:
- Lift dimensions and weight capacity
- Loading bay access and permitted hours
- Door widths on the route from bay to floor
- Where the power and data outlets actually are — not where the plan says
- Whether the building requires moves outside business hours
Older buildings and converted premises are where this bites. A desk that will not fit the lift becomes a stairwell carry, which changes the crew size and the timeline.
Sort the building paperwork early
Most commercial buildings require a certificate of insurance from the moving company before granting access, naming the building owner and management as additional insured, often with specified coverage limits. These take time to issue and are a common cause of a move being turned away at the door.
Request the requirements from both buildings in writing, and pass them to your mover as early as possible. Also confirm:
- Permitted moving hours and whether weekends are allowed
- Lift reservation procedure
- Floor and wall protection requirements
- Security and access arrangements for after-hours work
Phase the move around the business, not the calendar
Few businesses need everything to arrive at once. The usual sequence:
Phase one — ahead of the move. Archives, storage, surplus furniture, anything not used weekly. Move it early and the critical weekend gets dramatically simpler.
Phase two — the main move. Typically Friday evening through the weekend. Desks, chairs, cabinets, equipment.
Phase three — go-live. IT reconnection and testing before staff arrive, not alongside them.
For larger offices, moving department by department over successive weekends keeps part of the business trading throughout. It costs more in mover time and usually costs far less in lost operating days.
Treat IT as a separate project
This is where office moves fail.
- Back up everything, verify the backups, and keep a copy off-site during the move.
- Photograph the back of every rack, server and workstation before disconnecting anything.
- Label both ends of every cable.
- Have connectivity live and tested at the new site before moving day, not on it.
- Move servers and network equipment first, so they are up before workstations arrive.
- Arrange for IT to test systems before staff return — the first hour of the new week should not be the first test.
Consider whether ageing equipment is worth moving at all. Replacing a machine that was due for replacement anyway is often cheaper than relocating it, and the new one can be configured at the destination in advance.
Chain of custody for sensitive material
Client files, personnel records, financial documents and anything covered by a confidentiality or regulatory obligation need handling that ordinary office contents do not.
Use sealed, numbered containers with a signed manifest at both ends, keep them separate from general cartons, and have a named person responsible for the count. For regulated industries — legal, medical, financial — confirm in advance what your obligations require, and document that you met them.
Label so that nobody has to ask
Every item gets a label matching the destination floor plan: room or zone, position, and a sequence number. Colour-coding by department works well and is faster to read than text at a distance.
Put a copy of the floor plan on the wall at the destination, and station someone there who can direct the crew without being asked twice. Crew time spent waiting for a decision is the most expensive time in the move.
Tell everyone, well before the day
- Staff: the schedule, what they pack themselves, where to be on the first day, who to ask.
- Clients and suppliers: the new address and any period of reduced service.
- Mail, deliveries and couriers: redirects in place before the move, not after.
- Everywhere your address is published: website, email signatures, invoices, letterhead, Google Business Profile, directory listings and social profiles.
That last group is routinely forgotten and quietly damages local search visibility for months. An address that disagrees across the web is a problem for customers and for search engines alike.
Ask each employee to pack their own desk
Give everyone cartons and labels and a deadline the day before the move. Personal items, desk contents and anything they would rather handle themselves.
It is faster, it reduces breakage and complaints, and it means nobody arrives to find their belongings packed by a stranger.
The first day back
Have the coordinator and IT on site before anyone else. Check that systems are up, phones route correctly, and the floor matches the plan. Expect a snagging list and set aside time to work through it rather than pretending the move ended when the truck left.