An office move runs on two clocks. The lease notice date is fixed and cannot be negotiated after it passes, and IT and comms provisioning is the longest lead item. The removal itself is the shortest task in the whole project.
Most office move checklists start with packing. That is the wrong end. By the time anyone is packing, every decision that could have gone wrong has already been made. This plan works from twelve weeks out, in the order the deadlines actually fall, and it deals with the part you own rather than the part your removals contractor owns.
The short version
- Your first hard deadline is the break clause or notice date on your existing lease. It sits before everything else and it does not move.
- Your longest lead item is connectivity, not furniture. Circuits and lines are ordered in weeks, sometimes months.
- Desk allocation is a decision, not an admin task. Make it before the move, not on the Monday after.
- Dilapidations on the space you are leaving can arrive as a claim long after you have handed the keys back.
- The physical move is usually one weekend. Everything in this plan exists to make that weekend uneventful.
What actually sets the timeline
Two things, and neither of them is the removal. The first is your lease. Break clauses carry a notice period, and serving notice late means serving it for the next break, which can be years away. The second is connectivity. A new circuit at a new address is provisioned by a third party on their schedule, and no amount of internal urgency shortens it.
Everything else fits around those two. Furniture, crates and vans are flexible right up until the final fortnight, which is why office relocation gets booked late and blamed early. If a move goes wrong, it is almost never because the vans were late.
| Phase | Weeks before the move | The one thing that must finish |
|---|---|---|
| Commit | 12 to 10 | Lease notice served and new premises agreed |
| Design | 10 to 8 | Floor plan and desk allocation signed off |
| Order | 8 to 6 | Connectivity and building access confirmed |
| Communicate | 6 to 4 | Staff briefed and address changes submitted |
| Decommission | 4 to 2 | Everything you are not taking is gone |
| Execute | 2 to 0 | Change freeze and final walkthroughs |
Twelve to ten weeks: the lease decisions nobody enjoys
This phase is legal and financial, and it is the only phase where a missed date cannot be recovered by working harder later.
- Confirm the exact notice date on your existing lease and who is authorised to serve it. Diarise it with a reminder well in front of it.
- Commission a dilapidations assessment on the space you are leaving. Understanding the claim before you move gives you time to do the work yourself, which is usually the cheaper route.
- Get a schedule of condition on the new space before you take occupation, with photographs and a date. This is the document that protects you at the other end of the new lease.
- Name one internal project owner. Not a committee. One person with the authority to make decisions and a standing slot in the diary.
- Agree who signs off spending. Office moves stall on approval, not on effort.
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Ten to eight weeks: floor plan, desk mapping and headcount
Design the new space around the headcount you will have on move day plus whatever growth you have already committed to, not the headcount you have now.
- Produce a numbered floor plan. Every desk, meeting room and storage position gets a number.
- Allocate people to desk numbers and publish it. This is the single most effective thing you can do to make the first Monday calm.
- Walk the new space with a tape measure. Existing furniture rarely fits a new footprint as neatly as a drawing suggests.
- Decide what is coming and what is not, item by item. Moving furniture you intend to replace is the most common avoidable expense in an office move.
- Check power and data positions against your desk plan. Sockets in the wrong place turn into trailing cables that fail a risk assessment.
- Book removals surveys at both sites now, while the plan is still changeable.
Eight to six weeks: connectivity is the critical path
Order circuits, lines and any leased connectivity as early as this phase, because provisioning is measured in weeks and the clock does not start until the order is placed. Everything else in the project can absorb a slip. This cannot.
- Place the connectivity order for the new site and get a written provisioning date.
- Plan the cut-over itself, not just the installation. Decide the hour when the old site goes dark and the new one goes live, and who is present for it.
- Keep the old connection running past the move date if the contract allows. Overlap is cheap insurance compared with a team unable to work.
- Confirm building access at both ends: goods lift booking, loading bay, out-of-hours permissions and security passes. Managed buildings often allow one move per day and take bookings well ahead.
- Confirm the move window with your landlord or building manager in writing.
- Sort insurance, alarm and access control at the new premises.
Six to four weeks: staff, clients and the statutory list
Tell people once, properly, with the detail they actually need: the address, the date, what happens to their desk, what they pack themselves and what they do not touch.
Then work the address change list. It is longer than most teams expect.
- Companies House, if the registered office is changing
- HMRC for VAT, PAYE and Corporation Tax
- Your business bank and card providers
- Insurers, including employers’ liability and any professional indemnity
- The local authority for business rates at both the old and new premises
- Utilities, broadband and any telephony provider
- Clients, suppliers and anyone who delivers to you regularly
- Your website, Google Business Profile, email signatures, invoices and letterhead
- Couriers and any subscription that arrives physically
Order signage now if you need it. Lead times on anything fabricated will outlast your patience.
Four to two weeks: decommission before you pack
The cheapest item in any office move is the one you do not move. This phase is about reducing volume before anyone quotes on it or lifts it.
- Clear the storage rooms. Every office has a cupboard nobody has opened since the last move.
- Arrange confidential document destruction with a certificate, and separate it from general disposal.
- Deal with redundant IT properly. Electrical equipment has its own disposal route and wiping drives is not optional.
- Brief staff on personal packing: a crate each, labelled with their desk number from the floor plan, packed by a stated deadline.
- Agree the labelling system with your contractor and make sure it maps to the numbered floor plan rather than to room names.
- If the two leases do not overlap cleanly, arrange the gap now. Splitting a move across two dates with storage in between is far easier to plan than to improvise.
The final fortnight and the move window
Freeze everything. No new furniture decisions, no desk swaps, no scope changes. Late changes are where move weekends go wrong.
- Walk both sites with your contractor and the final plan in hand.
- Confirm parking, lift booking and access times in writing one more time.
- Distribute crates and set the packing deadline a full day before you think you need it.
- Nominate who is on site at each end during the move and make sure both have building access and phone numbers.
- Take meter readings and photographs at the old site as you leave.
- Plan the first morning at the new site: who arrives early, where people sit, where the kettle is. Small things decide whether the first day feels organised.
- Book the snagging walk for the week after, and keep the old premises accessible until dilapidations work is signed off.
Who owns what: your team and your removals contractor
Most of the friction in an office move comes from assuming the other side is handling something. This is the split that works.
| Workstream | Your team | Removals contractor |
|---|---|---|
| Lease notice and dilapidations | Yes | No |
| Floor plan and desk allocation | Yes | No |
| Connectivity and IT cut-over | Yes, with your IT provider | No |
| Staff communication and packing deadlines | Yes | No |
| Site survey and written move plan | Sign it off | Yes |
| Crates, materials and labelling system | Brief the scheme | Yes |
| Furniture dismantling and reassembly | No | Yes |
| Transport and access on the day | Confirm permissions | Yes |
| Disposal of what you are not taking | Decide | Often yes, if asked early |
The right time to ask a contractor about the third column is at survey stage, when the answers can still change your plan. If your premises are a shop, warehouse, kitchen or clinic rather than a conventional office, the handling requirements differ enough that it is worth treating it as a commercial removals job from the outset.
When a twelve-week plan is the wrong shape
It is too much for a small team moving inside the same building, or between serviced offices where the space comes furnished and connected. If your move is ten people and a shared drive, this plan will slow you down rather than protect you.
It is not enough for laboratories, data centres, regulated healthcare premises or anything with machinery bolted to a floor. Those need specialist decommissioning, longer lead times and, usually, a longer plan than twelve weeks.
And it assumes you are moving to space that is ready. If you are fitting out, the fit-out programme becomes the master schedule and this checklist becomes a workstream inside it, not the other way around.
Common questions about planning an office move
How far ahead should we start planning?
Twelve weeks is a workable minimum for a straightforward office of conventional size. What really sets the start date is your lease notice period and your connectivity lead time, so work backwards from whichever of those two is longer and add contingency.
What is the longest lead item?
Connectivity, in almost every case. Circuits and lines at a new address are provisioned on a third party’s schedule and cannot be accelerated by internal pressure. Signage, bespoke furniture and anything fabricated to order come next.
Who should own the move internally?
One named person with decision-making authority and time formally allocated to it. Office moves fail when ownership is shared between people who each assume someone else is tracking the deadline.
Do we need a schedule of condition on the new office?
It is worth having. A dated, photographed record of the condition of the space when you take it is what protects you against a dilapidations claim when you eventually leave it. Your solicitor or surveyor will advise on what your particular lease requires.
How do we get a price for the move?
Send the desk count at both addresses, the floor each site is on and whether there is a goods lift, your preferred move window, and a note of anything heavy, specialist or confidential. A floor plan helps more than a written description. Send it through the quote form and you will get a written price back.
Send us your desk count, your sites and your preferred window and we will come back with a written quote.
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