The office move IT checklist, in the order things have to happen

The two things that decide your timeline

Before anything else, get these two moving, because they are the longest poles and nothing else can compensate for them.

The internet connection at the new address. Not a transfer, a new install. Business connections routinely take four to twelve weeks, longer if the building needs any construction to bring service in. Order it the day the lease is signed, and ask specifically whether the building already has service to the demarcation point or whether the carrier needs to bring it in. Those are very different timelines.

Cabling. New premises rarely have usable data cabling where you need it. Existing cabling in a used space is often unlabelled, untested, and terminated in a cupboard nobody can find. Getting cable installed means scheduling a contractor, and doing it before the space is finished is dramatically cheaper than after, because open ceilings and unpainted walls make everything faster.

If you take nothing else from this: order the internet and book the cabling first.

Twelve weeks out

Order the internet, and a second connection if you need failover. Get the install date in writing. Ask what the demarcation point is and where it lands in the building.

Walk the new space with a floor plan and mark every device location. Desks, printers, cameras, access points, displays, door readers, point-of-sale, the machine in the shop. Every one of those is a cable, and it is cheaper to add one now than to discover it later.

Decide where the rack goes. It needs power, ventilation, and to be reasonably central so cable runs stay within the 90 metre limit. It should not be a cupboard with no airflow, and it should not be the room most likely to flood. Getting this wrong is the most expensive mistake available, because it is not fixable afterwards.

Book the cabling contractor. Ask for a quote that includes certification testing per run, labelling at both ends, and an as-built drawing. If those are not itemised, ask why. What moves the price of a cabling job is worth understanding before you compare quotes.

Check the lease for what you are allowed to do. Core drilling, ceiling access, roof penetrations for satellite or wireless, exterior camera mounting. Landlord approval takes time and sometimes gets refused.

Eight weeks out

Wireless plan. Not “we will put an access point in the middle.” Access point count and placement from the floor plan, with cable to each. Note where the walls are solid, where there is glass, and where racking will go, because coverage and capacity are different problems.

Phones. Whether the system moves, whether numbers port, and how long porting takes. Number porting has its own lead time and its own way of going wrong on a Friday.

Order hardware with long lead times. Switches, firewall, access points, displays, camera equipment. Anything that has to be configured before the move should arrive with weeks to spare.

Decide what does not move. A move is the natural moment to retire equipment rather than pay to relocate it. Anything you are retiring needs its data dealt with properly, not a trip to the cupboard at the new place.

Book electrical work. Outlets behind displays, power to the rack on its own circuit, power at each desk cluster. The electrician and the cabling contractor need to not be in each other’s way, which means both should know the other exists.

Four weeks out

Update your address everywhere. This takes longer than people think and it is where a move quietly costs you business. Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, your website, invoicing templates, email signatures, insurance, banking, suppliers, and every directory carrying your details. Listings go stale in places nobody checks, and an old address after a move is exactly how that starts.

Do not change the Google profile until close to the move. Changing it too early sends people to an empty building.

Confirm the cabling and internet dates. In writing. Chase anything vague now, while there is still time to react.

Plan the cutover. Which systems move when, in what order, and who is doing each part. Write it down as a sequence with times against it. Anything cloud-based can be working at the new site before anyone arrives. Anything on premises has a window where it is in a vehicle.

Arrange building access for the move weekend. Both buildings. Including out-of-hours, including the loading dock, including whether the elevator needs booking.

Two weeks out

Test the new internet connection. It should be live and tested before moving day, not on it. Plug something in and confirm the speed and the addressing.

Pre-configure everything. Firewall, switches, access points, all configured and labelled before they leave the old site or the supplier. Configuring hardware on a Saturday in an empty building with no internet is how moves overrun.

Take a full backup and verify a restore. Not just take one. Restore something from it and confirm it opens. Equipment in a truck is equipment at risk, and this is the one moment when your backup is genuinely load-bearing.

Photograph the existing rack before disconnecting anything, from several angles, close enough to read the labels. This will save someone an hour on the Sunday.

Label everything as it comes apart. Both ends of every cable. Masking tape and a marker is fine.

Tell your customers. New address, and any period when phones or email might be interrupted.

Move weekend

An order of operations that works:

1. New site network live first. Rack in place, switches powered, internet confirmed, wireless up and tested.
2. Printers and shared devices next, so they are working before people need them.
3. Servers and on-premises systems moved and brought up. Test before anyone relies on them.
4. Workstations placed and connected. Test one from each area rather than assuming.
5. Phones tested, including inbound calls from an outside line, not just internal ones.
6. Cameras, access control and displays commissioned.
7. Walk every desk and plug something in. Every jack. This is how you find the two runs that were mislabelled.

First week in

Wireless survey the occupied space. Predicted coverage and actual coverage differ once furniture, stock and people are in the building. Expect to move an access point.

Test everything nobody thought about. The fax line if you still have one. The alarm’s phone connection. The card payment terminal. The label printer in the shop. Door release buttons. Anything that dials out.

Collect the as-built drawing and the certification test results from the cabling contractor. If you do not ask in the first week you will not get them, and in three years when a jack stops working you will wish you had.

Fix your Google Business Profile pin. Not just the address, the actual map pin location. Pins land in the wrong place in industrial parks and plazas constantly, and the address being correct does not mean the pin is.

The two things that always get forgotten

Whatever is on a phone line. Alarm panels, elevators, fire panels, older payment terminals. Somebody unplugs a copper line at the old site and something at the new one has nowhere to dial. Ask the alarm company specifically, weeks ahead.

The machine in the corner. Every business has one PC running something old and irreplaceable, connected to a physical device, that nobody wants to touch. Identify it early. It may need its own plan, and the vendor may need to be involved.

What this means for your building

A move from an office in Oshawa to a larger one in Whitby is mostly about internet lead time and cabling into an unfinished space. Straightforward if started early.

A move into a warehouse or steel building in Courtice adds a wireless design problem that cannot be solved by guessing. Racking blocks signal, and access point placement has to account for the aisle layout that does not exist yet.

A move into a shared or multi-tenant building brings landlord approvals into the critical path, and those cannot be compressed by paying more.

A clinic move has the longest tail, because practice management systems, imaging equipment and any connected medical device each involve a vendor with their own schedule.

What to do about it

1. Order the internet today if the lease is signed. This is the item most likely to delay everything.
2. Walk the space with a floor plan and mark every device position.
3. Pick the rack location deliberately, with power, ventilation and cable distances in mind.
4. Book the cabling contractor and insist that certification testing, labelling and an as-built drawing are itemised in the quote.
5. Check the lease for what needs landlord approval.
6. Build the cutover sequence as a written timeline with names against each step.
7. Verify a restore two weeks out.

We do the cabling, the wireless, the network and the ongoing support as one job, which mostly means nobody is waiting on somebody else’s contractor on the Saturday.