Number everything to a floor plan
Before anything moves, produce a plan of the new office with positions numbered, and label every desk, pedestal and crate to a position. It takes very little effort and it removes the single biggest waste in an office move — thirty people pushing furniture around because it arrived in the right building and the wrong place.
Technology is a separate strand with an owner
Screens, docks, cabling, printers, the comms cabinet and anything in a server room are not furniture and should not be planned as though they were. Somebody — usually your IT provider — needs to own when things come down and when they must be live again.
The rest of the sequence is built around that, not the other way round.
Files need a chain of custody
Personnel records, client files and anything else with personal data in it should travel in sealed, numbered crates with a signed handover at both ends.
- Decide before the move what is confidential and who signs for it.
- Seal and number those crates separately from general storage.
- Do not stage them in a communal corridor, a shared lift lobby or an open yard.
- Get the handover signed at the receiving end rather than assuming.
Tell the building, not just your staff
Offices in CR4 are frequently above a unit, a counter or a shop. The people underneath you have a business to run and a shared stairwell to use, and being told in advance turns an imposition into a courtesy.
Purge before you pack, not after
Every office contains a quantity of paper, furniture and equipment that nobody will ever use again. Moving it is the most expensive possible way to dispose of it, and deciding what goes is much easier before it is in a crate.