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Offices can be a nightmare to move. There are so many things that could go wrong. From putting the wrong equipment in the wrong place to underestimating sizes and logistics, moving an office could send someone crazy! Recent developments in the world of work have made relocation necessary for some companies, so planning and executing a move efficiently is something that many businesses should prepare for. Both the management of a firm and the people involved in the office move should be aware of what outcomes they expect from this practical project.
Moving an office will result in downtime – there’s no way around it. However, that downtime need not end up being an extended period of inactivity. Your best bet would be contacting a professional moving service to help you arrange your office move. The right company will not only help with your scheduling but even chip in to get your office up and running again. Check out https://texasmovingusa.com/services/office-movers/ for move details about what Texas Moving USA can do to help your office move.
These ten tips should help the businesses involved in intensive office moves reduce their stress.
1. Plan As Early as Possible
It’s impossible to overstate how important planning is to ensure that office moves go off without a hitch. Ideally, you should give yourself two to three months before the move to start planning. The more time you have to plan, the less likely you are to miss stuff that you’d have noticed. Setting your moving date early lets you choose your moving company and capitalize on the excellent rates. Planning gives you an idea of the space you’re moving from, where you’re moving to, and any issues you may encounter on the way. It would be best if you didn’t keep your planning mental-only either. Preferably, have a physical notepad dedicated to your move so that you can list out the essential things that a new office should have in it.
2. Do a Reconnaissance
While it might sound like something you’d do in a spy movie, visiting the site of your new office will give you a good idea of the things you’ll need to get to ensure a smooth move. Issues like access to the door and the number of exits the building has will make it easier to draft moving plans. The utilities available can help you to formulate a game plan. A good appreciation of the space constraints will also tell you which bits of furniture should go in first. The more prominent furniture elements should make their way into the building before the smaller, lighter ones to give you the maximum flexibility in your move. Finally, entries and exit sizes will inform you of the best way to get things into the building.
3. Sort Out the Budget
How much money does the office have for the move? Here you can check the information according to this question. The office’s move is reliant on the budget, so staying within those confines is preferable. To start with, the office should determine the basic cost for the move. This cost estimate should include the price of the moving company and the utilities that the business needs to help it achieve the relocation. Boxes, tape, and even renting labor to help with the move will factor into this cost. Again, starting the process way before the actual move date ensures that you get better rates from the moving company. Ideally, shop around for different companies to see which offers you the best rates to stay within budget.
4. Start With the Non-Essentials
Early in your planning phase, you should have a list of the things that the business considers essential and those they don’t use all that often. This list creates the basis of your move priority. Before the moving day comes around, the office staff can start moving across items that are “non-essential” in nature. These elements might include infrastructures such as printers or other equipment that a company only uses occasionally. In doing so, the business cuts down the amount of moving it has to do on the actual day that it’s scheduled to move. Aside from reducing the number of hours they need to rent the moving truck, they also reduce the labor involved on that day.
5. Label Everything
That’s not an overstatement – we do mean everything. From cables to boxes and bags, each thing that you put into the moving truck should be properly labeled so it can find its place at the destination. Aside from setting up a good starting point to work from, labeling everything gives you the peace of mind that stuff taken from the old office space to the new one will be mounted up properly. There’s no need to worry about swapping around monitors or PCs with other people’s stuff. Labeling all the moved elements also ensures that the office can get back to full functionality in the least time possible.
6. Assign a Point-Person
If you’ve got anyone trained in project management, they’re the ideal person to assign as the manager for the move. Moving is an involved task that’s composed of several sub-tasks. Trying to treat it as a single monolithic event is a recipe for disaster. Instead, the point-person assigned to the task can draw up plans and take charge in setting up moving schedules. They can also do the early planning and set up an overall packing and unpacking assignment roster for the office. The office staff is a resource that many businesses fail to use properly when they move.
7. Don’t Move Everything
Do you really need everything from your old office moved to the new one? Consider this an opportunity to do some spring cleaning and shed some of the weight. Older equipment that no longer serves a purpose can be consigned to a landfill or donated to other companies that might have a use for them. Moving is a chance to clear out the stockpiles of goods that the business may have collected and kept if they’d be useful someday. It’s a chance to rediscover those things and toss them out since they probably won’t ever be useful in the future either.
8. Time Your Relocation Right
One of the most significant sources of stress for office managers in a move is getting the timing of the move wrong. You shouldn’t set your move to coincide with the end of the year where the business has targets to meet, for example. Instead, the movie should be done when the office has the least amount of open projects open. Liaising with clients to let them know that the office is moving will also ease the pressure on the employees, and by extension, management as well.
9. Delegate
While the point-person is one delegation method, it isn’t the only way that office managers should delegate moving duties. Setting up a staff committee with their own responsibilities, headed by the point-person, is more likely to see results. Managers that delegate effectively can pick out just the right people for the correct positions. This specialization of duties ensures that there’s always a person responsible for a particular sub-task.
10. Inform The Clients and Other Contacts
Business places that intend to move need to update their addresses. Doing so ahead of time gives you a bit of leeway to operate with when it comes to re-establishing the office for work at its new location. Long-time business clients are likely to see this as a necessary evil and will give you the time you need to re-establish your office at the new spot. Newer clients might be a bit more complicated, but sweetening the deal with discounts and other incentives will help them to accept the reality of the company’s downtime.
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This content is brought to you by Anton Galushko.
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