Office & Commercial Move Checklist: Relocate Without the Downtime

An office move isn't a big residential move — it's a business continuity project that happens to involve boxes. The furniture is the easy part; the real job is making sure your team can sit down and work on day one. Here's the checklist, week by week.

8 Weeks Out: Name an Owner and Draw the Map

Appoint one move coordinator with actual authority — a committee-run move is a move nobody runs. Get a floor plan of the new space and decide now who sits where, which meeting rooms get which furniture, and what isn't coming at all. Give your current landlord written notice per your lease, and book your internet and phone installation at the new address immediately: circuit installs routinely take four to six weeks and are the single most common cause of a dead first week.

6 Weeks Out: Book the Movers and the Buildings

Inventory everything that moves: desks, chairs, monitors, servers, printers, whiteboards, the plants. Book a commercial moving crew — evenings and weekends are standard for office moves precisely so the business doesn't stop — and confirm what both buildings require: certificates of insurance, freight elevator reservations, loading dock hours, and protection for lobbies and corridors. Commercial buildings are stricter about all of this than any residential building.

4 Weeks Out: Plan the IT Move Like Its Own Project

IT is where office moves die. Back up everything before anything is unplugged. Photograph and label every workstation's cabling before teardown. Decide what gets professionally decommissioned versus carried by the crew — servers and network gear deserve their own plan and, ideally, their own hands. This is also the purge window: shred out-of-retention files, recycle dead equipment properly, and sell or donate furniture that isn't making the trip. Moving less is the cheapest thing you can do.

2 Weeks Out: Put Every Desk in a Crate

Issue every employee a crate or box, a label with their name and their new seat number, and one rule: personal items and desk contents packed by end of day before the move, monitors and equipment left for the crew. A seat-numbered label on every single item — chairs included — is what turns unload day from a scavenger hunt into a delivery.

Move Weekend: Sequence It

IT infrastructure moves first and gets reassembled first, so the network is live while furniture is still rolling in. Then workstations by zone, then common areas. Your coordinator stays at the new site directing traffic against the floor plan; someone else sweeps the old office — every drawer, cabinet, and server closet — before handing back keys.

Day One: Priorities in Order

Internet up, phones ringing, workstations on, coffee machine running — in that order. Keep a small punch-list crew free for the inevitable missing cable and wobbly desk, and let everyone else do their actual jobs. That's the whole point of the plan.

Price It Before You Plan It

Commercial moves are quoted on inventory and access, same as any move — just with freight elevators and dock schedules in the mix. Send photos or a walkthrough video of your space through our quote request and get one fixed, foreman-reviewed price back fast, plus a match with a crew that does commercial work. Budget certainty is a business requirement too.