An office move is judged on one number, which is how many hours the business was unable to operate. Everything you do in the weeks beforehand is aimed at that number.
Confirm building requirements at both addresses, sequence the IT move separately from the furniture, assign one internal decision maker, and get the certificate of insurance filed before anyone asks for it. Each of those prevents a specific delay that otherwise lands on move day.
Settle Building Requirements at Both Addresses First
Commercial buildings control access far more tightly than homes, and the requirements differ between landlords in ways nobody tells you until you ask. Loading dock reservations, freight elevator bookings, protective padding in the elevator car, and approved move windows are all set by building management rather than by your mover.
Ask both buildings the same questions and get the answers in writing. What hours are moves permitted, how far ahead must the dock and elevator be reserved, what insurance limits does the building require, and who holds the keys to the service entrance on a Saturday.
Most Salt Lake City office buildings require a certificate of insurance naming the building as an additional insured before a crew is allowed in the door, and we provide a COI as standard.
Our commercial moving crews in Salt Lake City work inside those restrictions regularly, which is why the paperwork question is worth raising at the quote rather than the week before.
Decide When the Business Can Afford to Be Down
The move window drives everything else. Weekend and after-hours moves cost more in scheduling but far less in lost productivity, and for most offices, that trade is not close. A Friday evening load with a Sunday setup means Monday opens in the new space.
Map what has to be running first on the other side. For a professional services firm, that is phones, internet, and workstations. For a retail or warehouse operation, it may be inventory access and a loading door.
Sequencing the move around that list rather than around the furniture layout is what turns a two-day outage into a half-day one. Anything that can move early should, which usually means archives, storage rooms, and spare furniture go a week ahead of everything else.
Decide how the floor will be laid out while you are at it, since setting up the new workspace is far easier when the crew arrives with a floor plan rather than a guess.
Treat IT as a Separate Project With Its Own Timeline
Servers, network gear, and workstations should never be handled as part of the general furniture move. The dependencies run in a specific order, and getting that order wrong is the single most common reason an office cannot open on Monday.
- Confirm internet circuit activation at the new address weeks ahead, not days
- Photograph every rack and workstation before anything is unplugged
- Label cables by destination rather than by device
- Move and stand up the network before the first workstation arrives
- Schedule a test of phones, printers, and shared drives before staff return
Circuit activation is the long pole, and it is outside everybody’s control, which is why it gets confirmed first. Detailed sequencing for planning IT for an office move covers what belongs to the mover and what belongs to your IT provider.
Planning an office move in Salt Lake City?
Call us early, and we will scope the COI, the dock reservation, and the after-hours window in one conversation.
Assign One Decision Maker and Communicate Early
Office moves stall on decisions nobody is authorized to make. Someone has to answer whether a desk goes against the window or the wall, whether a damaged chair is worth moving, and who gets which office, and that person needs to be on site rather than reachable by text.
Name them early and tell the crew who they are. Then communicate to staff on a schedule rather than in one announcement.
People need to know when to pack their own desks, what the company is packing for them, what happens to personal items, and when they are expected back in the office. Vague timelines generate a week of questions that all land on the one person already coordinating the move.
Purge Before You Pay to Move It
Offices accumulate more unused material than homes do, and all of it is priced by the hour to carry. Furniture nobody sits in, equipment three generations old, archive boxes past their retention period, and supplies for a process that changed in 2019 are all moving costs with no return.
Run the purge three to four weeks out, not during packing week. Decide what is donated, what is sold, what is recycled, and what is shredded, then schedule those pickups separately from the move itself.
Moving an office this quarter?
Call us for a walkthrough, and we will build the schedule around your downtime, not around ours.
