Office Relocation Without Stopping Work: an 8-Week Plan

An office move is measured in hours of downtime, not kilometres. A 40-desk company typically loses one to three working days — almost always because the move was planned as a transport job rather than as a project with phases, owners and a fallback. Below is a working eight-week schedule, the inventory you need before asking for a price, and the mistakes that stretch the pause.

Why office moves are counted in downtime

A home move ends when the boxes are in the new flat. An office move only ends when people are working again: network up, phone numbers switched, access restored, files where they belong. Between "furniture unloaded" and "sales is taking calls" there can be another full day — and that is the most expensive day of the whole project.

So the schedule is not built forward from the loading date. It is built backwards from the moment the business must be operational again: when IT has to be live, when furniture must be in place, when the old office has to be cleared.

The eight-week plan

Weeks 8–6: inventory and decisions

• Full inventory: desks, cabinets, server room, archive, kitchen, consumables store.
• Decide what does not travel. Writing off old furniture is nearly always cheaper than moving it.
• A floor plan of the new office with numbered positions — the crew works from this on the day.
• Read the lease: notice periods, required condition on exit, who pays for making good.

Weeks 5–4: contractors and IT

• Request quotes against the actual inventory. Without it you get an estimate, and the final invoice is higher.
• Plan IT separately: connectivity at the new address, number porting, the cut-over date. This has the longest lead time and is the item most often started too late.
• Name one owner per department — one person responsible for their area's boxes.

Weeks 3–2: labelling and the archive

• One labelling system: destination zone number plus box number. Colour-coding by department speeds up unloading more than any written label.
• Pack the archive and finance records first. They are rarely needed day to day and their volume is almost always underestimated.
• If the new space is not ready, put part of the load into temporary storage rather than running two half-offices.

Week 1 and moving day

• Staff pack their own personal items into labelled boxes on the last working day.
• The server room goes down last and comes up first. Where possible: move Friday evening, rebuild Saturday, keep Sunday as buffer.
• Have one person from the company on site with the floor plan. The crew should never have to ask where something goes.

What to measure before requesting a price

Four things drive the cost of an office move: volume in cubic metres, floor level and lift access at both ends, how much furniture needs dismantling, and how tight the deadline is. Anything that cannot travel alongside ordinary furniture is quoted separately.

The more precise the inventory, the closer the preliminary figure lands to the final invoice. Layner Group returns a preliminary offer within 15–30 minutes, but a firm quotation is always built on an inventory, never on "roughly forty people".

What needs separate handling

Servers and network hardware. Rigid packaging, upright, strapped. Pull drives and modules and move them separately. Agree in writing who owns the backup taken before shutdown.

Records containing personal data. Sealed boxes, named handover, signed receipt. That is a GDPR requirement, not caution.

Safes. The classic moving-day discovery is that the safe does not fit the lift. Door widths and the removal route belong in the survey, not in the loading.

Bespoke furniture and glass partitions. These need crating and separate insurance: carrier liability under CMR is capped by weight, not by what the item cost you.

Five mistakes that stretch the downtime

1. IT left until last. Connectivity at a new address is ordered in weeks, not days.
2. No placement plan. The crew unloads into the corridor and the company spends two days distributing boxes itself.
3. Volume estimated by eye. A 20% undercount means a second trip and a lost day.
4. Moving at month end. The busiest window for every carrier: fewer slots, higher rates.
5. Forgetting the old office. Making good and clearing waste rarely appear in the schedule, and the lease runs another month.

Timing and cost

Up to 20 desks, a single weekend is realistic. Between 20 and 60 desks, expect the weekend plus Monday for adjustments. Above 100 desks, moves are normally phased department by department so the company never stops entirely.

Cross-border timing depends on distance, driver hours and route load — covered in our guide to EU transit times. Domestically an office move is usually a single day; between EU countries, expect two to five days in transit.

Where to start

Start with the inventory and the date the business must be operational again. Everything else is planned backwards from there. If you want one contractor for the whole cycle — dismantling through to placement by plan — see the terms for office and business relocation across the EU, or send the inventory for pricing: a preliminary offer comes back within 15–30 minutes.