How to Prepare Your Business for a Weekend Office Move Without Disrupting Monday Operations

How to Plan for a Weekend Office Relocation?

Do you need to move your office at the weekend without disrupting Monday operations? For this, you need a military-style precision. You need to consider the following:

Weeks Before the Move

The preparation of office relocation should start a few weeks earlier and you need to build an internal relocation command team. Assign leads for IT, facilities, staff communication, and operations. Consult us a week earlier so that we can plan a swift move. 

After making the office ready for the move, you need to consider decluttering. To minimize load and time, shred redundant documents, decommission obsolete hardware, and liquidate old furniture. This will lower the relocation charge as we offer a price based on the volume of the belongings.

All your stakeholders must be aware of your decision to relocate. Inform your clients, vendors, postal services, and internet service providers at least 4 to 6 weeks before. 

IT Setup and Backup

Tell your internet provider to ensure internet service in the new location a week before your relocation date. This will help you avoid being online on Monday. Even if any issue rises, they will have time to solve it. It's better to test VOIP systems offsite so that incoming calls from the customers are not missed over the weekend.

The primary task to be done after wrapping up work on Friday afternoon is to decommission servers, firewalls, and core networking gear. Remember, these must be reinstalled on Saturday without any delay. A full system backup must be done on Thursday or Friday. The on-premise hardware might encounter any startup issues and setting up a temporary cloud access is a good consideration in this case. 

Friday Afternoon Tasks 

Inform the employees to keep their desks clean when they leave on Friday afternoon. They must take personal items, electronic devices, and sensitive documents to home over the weekend. 

Rely on color-coded tags while matching floor plans. Like, you can consider blue for marketing or red for operations. Your Friday must end with securing freight elevator access, loading dock reservations, and floor protection at the old as well as in the new building. 

Saturday and Sunday

The entire Saturday must be kept for physical transport and hardware setup. Schedule heavy furniture, cables, and infrastructure transport in the morning. You can consider desk placement and monitor assembling in the afternoon. 

Keep your Sunday for dry run and testing. Here are some suggestions for you. 

11:00 AM: Perform a system test at the start of the day. All you need to ensure is to test all the workstations for power, phone connectivity, internet connectivity, and printing. 

2:00 PM: Give a thorough walkthrough of the office building in the afternoon. You need to check that HVAC systems, security access cards, common areas and restrooms are operational. If you find anything wrong, fix it immediately.

5:00 PM: When you are done with the testing phase, acknowledge directional placements. Post wayfinding signs so that employees can easily find their desks, restrooms, and breakrooms. If possible, stick the names or Employee IDs on every desk. This will help to eliminate any kind of morning chaos.

Monday Morning 

We can assure you to complete all the moving tasks within Sunday. Your new office must be work-ready on Monday. Here are some aspects that are to be considered.

Welcome Strategy: Adjusting in a new place can be a challenge for the employees. It is the duty of the management to make them feel comfortable. Host a 15-minute break over a coffee to boost their morale. Make them aware of the expectations. 

Deploy an IT/Floor Support Team: There might be any internet or IT issues like internet unavailability or missing keyboard. The IT staff will help to resolve this. Your floor support team must look for any chair adjustment or minor light setup. 

Post-Move Audit: A post-move audit is mandatory after an office relocation. Collect feedback and inspect whether you have left any item in your old office. When you are done with everything, sign off officially on commercial moving contracts.