Moving Your Office?

What’s the most important part of your office move?  It’s probably not what you think . . .

The most important part is making sure that these people, your staff, professionals, admins, programmers, call center, whoever makes up your office staff need to be as productive as possible right up to and immediately after the move, relocation or reorganization.

We’ve yet to have a client tell us “it’s ok if our people are not productive for several days, we make so much money that the lost revenue won’t hurt us.”

And I don’t envision a time where the company owner(s) / manager(s) will tell us this.

Moving Equals Stress and Overwhelm

One of the most stressful times in a companies existence is before and during a move or relocation or office reorganization.

People don’t like change, no sir, it is very high on the stress chart. Throw is a handful of upheaval like moving and a pinch of needing to keep projects, sales and operations on line and you have a recipe for stress, strife and un-pleasantry.

And, it doesn’t matter if you’re moving from floor to floor, down the street, across town or across the country – NO ONE LIKES IT.

And, if you’re the person in charge . . . well, we feel for the emotions and pain you’re going to go through as you pull the operation together.

Call in the Move Management Team You Can Trust

You don’t have to go it alone. We can help.

First, forget making the call to a mover for estimates and prices. This is typically the first thing people do because movers take care of moving right? Yes and No.

Let me explain. The moving company is one of several groups / companies / vendors that are key to your move’s success. Until you have a plan assembled, vendor types identified and a schedule built you don’t need to talk with anyone. You will, quite frankly be wasting yours and everyone’s time and creating more stress for yourself.

We’ve been through this many times in the past in lots of different situations. We’ve identified the traps and snares so you can avoid most of them – doesn’t that sound good?

Build A Project

Let’s briefly walk through how the project is built.

The Gathering

The first step is gathering all currently available information. This will include:

• Scope of work – what needs to be done
• Time frame of work – when does this project start, what is the completion date
• Who are the stake holders – what departments need to be involved, who should be involved
• List of vendors you want / have to use for specific areas

The Plan

The plan has several parts we will work on next. Not all of these are part of every project so we will adapt as needed.

The broad brush items are:

• The schedule – we use a scheduling program to identify work items, vendors and time frames. This allows us to manage and update the entire team on progress. This is similar to a construction schedule.
• Vendor Scope of Work – what are you responsible for managing? It could be as simple as the mover and furniture supplier/installer. Or it can be more complex and involve Structured Wiring, Carpet, Electrical, etc. As we stated before every project is different. The scope or work documents are developed here so we identify what needs to be done by when.
• Budget – Yeh, someone’s going to want to know what this is going to cost. So here’s where we start putting some figures in the spreadsheet to identify the costs. All of these are updated once the bids / costs are back from the vendors.
• Moving and Packing – This items are little more nitty gritty but you’ve have to think about them.
  • Who’s moving what – movers, equipment vendors, IT Equipment. These are identified now so we know what the scope of work will be.
  • Who’s packing what – yeh, there are options here  too. Are you doing this all in house or is some being outsourced.
  • Who’s unpacking – pretty much the opposite of the who’s packing question
  • Insurance – let’s identify the requirements so its all covered

The Set Up

We’re really cooking now. The plan is put together, we’re managing the schedule. Some vendors may already be on board and working. All of this is happening and you’re still able to perform the work that you have everyday without feeling completely overwhelmed.

No, we’re not going to lie to you, this is still going to be stressful even with our help, but it’s going to be manageable and you should not be losing any sleep over the project.

At this point we need to get into the nitty gritty of things. The actual activities will depend on what kind of move is going on and whether or not we’re physically involved in it.

There are shortcuts that can be taken to some of these activities if you decide that you don’t have the time, energy or staff. But, when IDI is involved we don’t cut corners because we know it will cause more problems and time spent later which is when you have the least amount of excess time.

So here is list of things we’re engaged in:

• Maintaining a sense of calm inside the office with oversight and control
• Developing a complete inventory of furniture and major equipment
• Applying inventory tags
• Developing new space drawings showing the locations of every item in each room
• Building room tags and layout to place on room door frame
• Finalizing mover / installer Scope of Work (SOW) documents
• Finalizing list of companies to provide pricing
• Performing pre-bid walk throughs
• Updating bidders on questions
• Answering questions and providing guidance on issues
• Reviewing pricing, making recommendations
• Awarding work and making sure paperwork is in order
• Reviewing invoices, extra charges and payments
• Updating schedule(s) for the move and contractors
• Maintaining a push for purging and clean up
• Developing plan for the removal of excess furniture / equipment
• Contacting vendors for removal
• And other activities as they arise and are required

As you can see there are lots of items that need to be dealt with during this process and all of this is on top of whatever your also responsible for on a daily basis. So if you are feeling a little overwhelmed, we get it and that’s what we’re here for.

Side note: All of these activities are outside of the “movers” scope of work. So you may be getting a clearer picture of why you don’t call a mover first. There is so much more that needs to be dealt with than just who is going to relocate the item(s).

The Execution

So, now we are at the point where stuff is moving. This is exciting and if we’ve done our job right (which is usually the case) this is actually a fairly boring period of time. There’s a lot of standing around and watching the plan play out. Sure there might be a few items that need to be dealt with like:

• A desk or office that didn’t get packed up
• An occasional elevator that breaks down
• Light timers that were overlooked  and now you’re in the dark

Some times stuff happens but with our planning and guidance, these are actually minor issues and you have the time and knowledge to deal with them.

So what happens during the execution. The entire plan has come together and stuff like this list is occuring:

• Furniture installers are dismantling furniture
• Movers are moving furniture, boxes, chairs, equipment
• Furniture installers are reinstalling furniture
• Equipment vendors are prepping equipment, moving and setting it up
• Your office/department move coordinators are overseeing their areas and making certain all items are taken care of
• Phone / IT staff or vendors are setting up equipment making sure the staff can be functional when they arrive

Yeh, lots of stuff is going on right now but its all good. The days will be long but the emotional toll should be minimal because you had a plan and executed on that plan so you were prepared.

So the staff shows up and starts unpacking – provided they are following directions provided they even know what to do with boxes or moving crates.

In many cases we set up a specific email address for them to send issues to rather than calling you or someone on your staff.  See, we think about these things before hand to make sure most everything can be dealt with.

Ready to move your office? We are here to help. Drop us a note through our contact form below and we’ll be in touch quickly to see where we can help out.