Office move IT checklist: what to plan, and when

Start with infrastructure, not furniture

The moment a lease is signed – or ideally before heads of terms are agreed – IT planning needs to begin. Not later, when the fit-out contractor is on site. Not after the furniture has been specified. Now.

The reason is the dependency chain. Every technology in the new office depends on what sits beneath it. Endpoints – laptops, phones, screens – depend on Wi-Fi coverage. Wi-Fi coverage depends on access point placement and power. Access points depend on the switches they connect to. Switches depend on structured cabling. Structured cabling depends on containment routes and comms room placement. Containment routes depend on the building fabric.

If you start at the wrong end of that chain, every decision upstream is locked in before the downstream requirements are understood. That's how you end up with a comms room that's too small, cable routes that run the wrong way, and access points mounted where the ceiling void doesn't have containment to support them.

A fit-out that's designed around the furniture and finishes first and the IT second will always cost more to correct than one where IT was involved from day one. The conversations that need to happen at lease signing are: where is the comms room, how will cable reach every floor plate, what's the power provision and does the building already have a broadband connection – or will one need to be ordered.

Scoping the new space

Before anything is specified or priced, someone needs to survey the new space. A desk-based assessment from a floor plan is not a survey. A survey means physically walking the building with a clear checklist.

That checklist should cover the comms room location and its dimensions – if it's been allocated already, check whether it's large enough to house the equipment needed and whether it has power and cooling provision. Check the proposed cable routes from the comms room to each floor zone, and identify where containment will run – through ceiling voids, under raised floors, down risers. Identify where the floor boxes will sit and confirm the routes are achievable.

Check the power provision in the comms room specifically. Network switching equipment runs continuously and generates heat. A standard 13A socket is not adequate for a rack of switching gear. You need a dedicated circuit, sized correctly, ideally with UPS (uninterruptible power supply) protection so a power blip doesn't take the network down.

Check whether the room has any cooling, or whether cooling will need to be specified. A sealed comms room with no ventilation in a building that gets warm in summer will fail – not maybe, not eventually, but predictably. This is a basic requirement that's missed on a surprising number of moves.

The output of the survey is a scope of works: what needs to be installed, where, to what standard, and what the timeline looks like against the fit-out programme.

Data and systems migration

An office move is a natural forcing function for a data and systems audit. Before anything is migrated, the question to answer is: what actually needs to move, what can be retired and what should move to the cloud rather than be reinstated on-premises?

For on-premises servers, the move is an opportunity to assess whether they still need to be on-premises at all. If a server is running applications that could be cloud-hosted, moving it physically is a cost with no return. Migrating to cloud equivalents before the move simplifies the physical relocation and reduces what needs to go in the new comms room.

For servers that do need to move, the process is: backup before you touch anything, verify the backup, then migrate. Backup verification is the step that gets skipped when timelines compress. Don't skip it. A backup you haven't verified is not a backup – it's an assumption.

Data migration off shared drives or file servers follows the same principle. Know what you're moving, confirm it's all present at the destination, and keep the source available until you've confirmed the destination is working correctly. Cutting off access to the old location before the new one is verified is a reliable way to lose data that nobody noticed wasn't in the migration scope.

Communications cutover

Comms cutover is where the most move-day surprises happen, and almost all of them are caused by decisions that were left too late.

Broadband is the most common culprit. A leased line – the type of dedicated internet connection most businesses with serious bandwidth requirements need – has a lead time of 6–12 weeks from order to installation. That lead time is not within your control once the order is placed; it depends on Openreach or the relevant network operator completing the civils work. If you order the line eight weeks before move day and there's a civils delay, you move without connectivity.

Order broadband as soon as the new address is confirmed. For leased lines, treat 12 weeks as the minimum and plan around that. If connectivity isn't live on move day, nothing else works – not cloud applications, not VoIP phones, not remote desktop, not payment systems.

VoIP phone systems need similar lead time for number porting. If you're keeping your existing numbers – which you should – the porting process involves your current carrier releasing the numbers and the new carrier accepting them. This takes time and can't be rushed on the day. Plan the porting window carefully: number porting typically happens in a scheduled window, not on demand, and the old system needs to remain live until the port is complete.

Don't assume a new ISP can match your go-live date. Confirm it in writing, with a contingency plan if they can't.

The week before and day of move

The week before the move is when you confirm everything is ready and define your go/no-go criteria. If anything on the critical path isn't confirmed, you need to know that before move day – not on it.

Where parallel running is possible – keeping both offices operational for a short overlap period – use it. Running both sites simultaneously for even a few days reduces the risk of a complete cutover failure. It costs something in dual running, but that cost is modest compared to a failed move that leaves staff unable to work.

Define the go/no-go criteria explicitly. Is the internet circuit live and tested? Is the VoIP system registered and calls routing correctly? Are the file servers accessible? Is remote access working? These are binary questions with binary answers. If any of them are "no" on the morning of the move, you need a decision-maker who can say whether you proceed or hold.

On move day, have the right people on site. That means someone who can troubleshoot network issues at the new office, someone who knows the phone system and someone with authority to make calls if things go wrong. Document who is responsible for what before the day starts. A move-day problem without a clear owner is a move-day problem that doesn't get fixed.

The rollback plan is the conversation nobody wants to have but everyone should have. If the new office isn't operational by mid-afternoon, can you put staff back in the old office? Can you operate remotely? Know the answer before you need it.

Common mistakes that cause day-one failures

Underestimating broadband lead times. Ordering connectivity too late is the single most common cause of moves where staff arrive at a new office with no internet. Six to twelve weeks for a leased line is not a guideline – it's the window. Order early.

Not testing the new environment before move day. A new office that's never been tested end-to-end is a new office full of surprises. Test the network, the phones, the Wi-Fi, the remote access and the line speeds before you move anyone in. Find the problems when there's time to fix them.

Forgetting about CCTV and access control. Security systems are IT infrastructure and they need to be part of the move plan. Access control systems need commissioning, door readers need to be enrolled, CCTV needs to be installed and recording. These systems often have their own lead times and their own commissioning processes. They're also the systems that get forgotten until someone can't get through a door on day one.

Assuming the IT moves itself. Equipment doesn't self-configure at the other end. Servers need to be racked and cabled. Switches need to be configured for the new network topology. Wi-Fi access points need to be positioned, powered and enrolled. None of this happens without someone doing it, and it all takes time. Build the IT commissioning work into the move timeline, not around it.