Planning The Big Office Move? Read On For More Tips
Moving offices can be a huge investment of time, money and practicalities. To ensure your relocation goes off without a hitch, look into removals and follow these top tips.
Planning The Relocation
It’s vital that planning starts as early on as possible. Consider all the implications of the move including cost and the impact on the daily operations of the business.
Create a Timeline
Any move is going to cause a degree of disruption, but you can develop relocation timelines that will help you plan for minimal interruption to the company and keep downtime minimal.
Try to plan the move for a quiet time in the business and ensure it won’t conflict with any deadlines and promises to customers. Remember to include time to outfit the new office, install furniture and any building work that needs doing. Also include telecom installations and IT setup in your timeline and of course the main day of the relocation.
Choose a Project Co-ordinator
Choose a project co-ordinator – be it an employee or someone from a removals company – who can take on the responsibility of ensuring the entire relocation, runs smoothly and on time.
This person can be the main point of contact between contractors and company and even employees.
Keep Staff in the Loop
Keeping employees informed of developments in the relocation will help make the entire transition a lot easier.
Understanding Responsibilities
Work to avoid ambiguity and expensive miscommunications. Be sure you really understand the scope of work that the removals company offers. Also understand who is responsible for each aspect of the relocation. In so doing, you will be able to clearly communicate to employees exactly what their roles are, such as packing or filing.
For example, if a member of staff thinks that the moving company is packing something up, but the moving company has stated the task is to be done by staff, such misunderstandings can cause delays and even result in extra charges.
Ample Cleaning and Packing Up Time
It’s important to allow sufficient time for everything to be packed and moved and for any waste to be cleaned. Make sure there is ample time to do the packing in between the arrival of the packing crates and the day of relocation.
It’s also a good idea to ask for early delivery of the moving boxes so that people who will be off site or on leave during the relocation can pack what they need to. Without a decent timeframe, packing will land up being rushed and items can easily go missing. This also delays the move and potentially incurs additional costs. Get in touch with an office cleaning company that can help you conduct clean up while you are moving things or right after. A clean environment can help so much with getting things done.
Nothing Like a Good Spring Clean
A move is the perfect opportunity to clear out waste and send documents to be archived. This process needs to begin as soon as possible and finished before removals is carried out by Reads Removals or other top international removals company.
Minimising Staffing Levels
During the relocation, try to only keep minimal staff onsite. You only need a few chief people which will help with the speed of the relocation. Too many people onsite can cause a health and safety issues and since the removals team will be carting about heavy items, they should encounter as few obstacles as possible.
Providing Technical Support
If you’re going to be moving telecoms and IT, make sure there is an engineer on call or preferably on site to offer technical support. What’s more, if you’re going to be moving to a larger building with multiple floors and need to use the goods or passenger lifts to deliver items, find out if there is a call out time for the lift engineer. You could also request onsite presence in the event of a breakdown to avoid lengthy delays to your big move and to avoid increased costs.
What About Post-Move Assistance?
Corporate relocations can offer the perfect opportunity to get rid of furniture that’s no longer needed or do away with filing systems that are no longer used. Take the time to think about post-move aftercare to help you decide what is no longer needed.
Moving Interstate can be tricky, this guide to business relocation comes in handy.
