The Office Relocation Checklist: What to Organise Before, During and After the Move

An office move is three separate jobs that most people treat as one: the physical move, the IT reconnection, and the make-good at the old premises. Most problems sit in the gaps between them. The furniture arrives, but the server is not reconnected, the internet is not live, the make-good contractor has not been told the lease is ending, and someone still has the old access cards. None of that is part of a removals booking. This checklist is built around those gaps.

What Are the Differences Between a Residential and an Office Move?

There are many similarities between office and residential moves. There are, however, some significant differences. Goods-in-Transit cover, where the provider has it, relates to goods damaged in transit. Loss of business operations and exposure to lease-end liabilities during the transition are managed by planning, not by a removals booking.

There is also the complexity of scope. A house move is mostly one job. An office move usually involves several providers. Different providers handle the workstations and filing cabinets (and possibly a make-good contractor for strip-out and reinstatement), the IT and networking, and the server infrastructure. They all work on different schedules.

Getting office removalist quotes is a good first step, but there are factors beyond the base quote that will shape the final cost and the move date. Those include the lift booking window at both buildings and the timing of your IT provider. Those two factors ultimately determine the constraints of your move. For a full breakdown of what drives that cost, see what an office move costs in Australia.

3 to 4 Months (or 12 to 16 Weeks) Out: Making Major Commitments

You are generally in good shape with service provider commitments if you start planning at three months out. But if you wait any longer, you risk having to book removalists, IT providers, and make-good contractors simultaneously under pressure.

Booking service providers should happen after you have committed to your new location and confirmed the move date, which normally occurs with the signing of the lease.

Organise the fit-out of the new office. If the new premises require construction or fit-out work to be ready for occupation, arrange the contractors now. Ask fit-out contractors for their lead time, because it can set your move date. There is often a time constraint to complete the fit-out due to furniture delivery schedules or other lease conditions.

Inspect and measure both sites. Walk both the old and new locations with a measuring tape. Take note of lift height, depth, and width at both buildings; stair count and dimensions; loading dock and truck parking access; and the carry distance from the loading area to the office floors. A quote built on a phone description or an emailed floor plan may result in unforeseen variations and additional costs on move day.

Book lifts at both buildings well in advance. Access time for lifts during a commercial move is typically outside normal business hours. Some buildings need weeks of notice. Ask the building manager at both addresses for their requirements as soon as the move date is set.

Confirm after-hours building access in writing. Many office moves are scheduled for evenings and weekends. Confirm access in writing for both buildings. Find out who provides the access card or code, whether security requires advance notice for after-hours access, and when access ends. A verbally authorised access arrangement is not sufficient. Get it in writing.

Collect insurance certificates. Building managers may require the removalist’s public liability certificate and Goods-in-Transit insurance details to grant access. Request these from the removalist when collecting quotes, not on move morning.

Lock in your IT provider timeline. Provide your IT provider with a schedule for disconnection and reconnection of servers at both the current and new locations. Find out whether the new site’s internet connection needs to be provisioned before servers can be reconnected. Give the removalist a move date only after you have the IT window confirmed in writing. Confirm the IT window before you confirm the truck, because the IT reconnection decides when staff can actually work at the new office.

Scope the make-good works. A make-good (restoring the premises to the condition required by the commercial lease exit clause) is a completely separate service from the physical move. What make-good requires depends on your lease, and can include removing fit-out, repainting and professional carpet cleaning. Arrange for a contractor to assess the scope and provide a start date now. Leaving this until the final week of the lease results in an expensive, rushed job and risks putting you in breach of your lease obligations. See what a make-good obligation can involve before the contractor visits.

Decide how sensitive documents will be handled. A removals booking covers transporting documents as physical items only. If records need to be transported under secure, chain-of-custody conditions, it is the client’s responsibility to make separate arrangements for that in advance.

4 to 6 Weeks Out: Operational Details and the Asset Audit

This is the most underestimated phase of the relocation process. Cost savings are achieved here through decisions that eliminate expensive variations on move day.

Draw numbered floor zones and label the furniture directly. Create a floor plan with numbered workstation locations and identify the function of each area. Using masking tape, label each desk, chair, and filing cabinet with its destination number directly on the physical furniture. Labelled boxes alone are not sufficient if the furniture itself is unlabelled. Provide the floor plan to the removalist team leader. On move day, the floor plan must be posted at both the origin and the destination. A well-labelled floor plan saves the crew from stopping to ask where things go.

Confirm crew size and vehicle type in writing. Larger or more complex moves need a two-person or three-person crew, and each is priced above a solo provider. Large furniture, servers, wall-mounted displays, and partitioning all require two-person lifts. If there is a safe, a server rack, or oversized displays involved, confirm the provider has the appropriate equipment before move day, not on it.

Label IT equipment by workstation number before packing. Affix workstation labels to monitors, docking stations, keyboards, headsets, and cable bundles. Items should not be packed loose. Labelled bags containing cables should be marked with what they connect to. This saves reconnection time and reduces IT helpdesk calls on the first day at the new office. The full sequence for servers and networking is set out in how to move IT and server equipment.

Audit all assets. Walk every room and decide what is moving, what can be sold or donated, and what needs to be disposed of. For the items headed for disposal, a skip bin or rubbish removal service is worth pricing for office-scale volumes. Items of business value should be photographed and documented. Back up all business data before disconnecting any IT hardware or servers. Hard copies of business records that no longer need to be retained should be destroyed using a secure shredding service, not placed in general waste.

Begin packing non-essential items three to four weeks before the move. Files, documents, and supplies can be boxed early. Items needed daily should not be packed until move week. Label each box with its destination room, a general description of contents, and any special handling instructions. Items labelled as fragile still need to be properly packed; a label alone offers no protection from mishandling.

Work through your address and contact notification list now. This task is time-consuming and is consistently left until after the move, with immediate operational consequences.

• Notify the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) if the registered office address is changing. Check asic.gov.au for how to lodge the change.
• Update your business address for ABN and GST registration records, starting at the Australian Taxation Office.
• Notify Australia Post to arrange mail redirection for the changeover period.
• Update bank accounts and financial institutions.
• Update business insurance and superannuation funds.
• Update business licences and other registrations.
• Update the business website, Google Business Profile, and other online listings.
• Notify regular clients and key suppliers.
• Notify delivery and courier services.
• Replace business stationery and other materials carrying the old address.

Start working through this list at least three weeks before the move, since some changes take time to process.

Brief staff on packing and set a cut-off date. Staff are to pack their own personal belongings and small desk items. Some supervision may be required. Incomplete desk packing on move day delays the whole job and increases the cost. On Urgent Pro removals bookings, damage to boxes you or your staff pack yourselves is excluded unless negligent handling by the crew is proved. If you want boxes covered normally, ask the provider to quote packing as a variation.

Arrange old-site cleaning separately. Check whether the lease requires a professional clean at the old location. If it does, arrange it to be completed once the make-good work is finished.

Move Week

Do the pre-move walkthrough with the removalist team leader the week before, not on move morning. Confirm the order of the move, lift booking times, and what to do if something does not fit in the lift. Discovering an access problem with the truck outside is not the time to solve it.

Photograph all server and switch cabling before disconnection. If there is any question later about a missing connection, the photographs resolve it quickly. Have these available for the IT team.

Conduct an inventory of all keys and access cards and confirm what is needed at both locations on move day. Assign one person to manage access at each site.

Pack IT equipment last. Computers, monitors, and other items essential for the business to operate on day one at the new location should be the last items packed at the old site and the first items unpacked and connected at the new one. They should not be buried under items that are not time-sensitive.

Prepare a day-one essentials kit. Set aside a clearly labelled bag or box for move day and the first morning at the new office. Include a first-aid kit, office supplies, keys and access cards for both locations, chargers for all electronics, a mobile internet hotspot as a backup if connection activation is delayed, and supplies for the team.

Move Day

The removalist team leader should arrive at the new location with the first crew to confirm the floor plan and verify the lift time window before unloading begins. They should also oversee the placement of all items throughout the day.

Agree the load order with the team leader at the pre-move walkthrough. Equipment the business needs on day one should load last so it comes off first. Items destined for the server room at the new site should travel separately from general office items.

Keep the removalist team and the IT team in separate zones. The removalist’s job ends when each item is in the correct room at the new site. The IT team’s job is to restore connections from that point. Having the two teams work in the same area simultaneously creates a safety risk and slows both teams.

Before leaving the old location, the removalist team should walk through all offices, storage areas, and cupboards. Final meter readings are taken if required by the lease. The condition of the property is photographed at handover. Access keys are collected and returned to the client. Items not accounted for at this point may require a second trip to recover.

The Scope Line: What the Removalist Does and What They Don’t

A removals booking covers the physical transport of office items. Disconnecting and reconnecting IT equipment and services is the responsibility of your IT provider or internal IT team. IT is not a service category on Urgent Pro, so it always needs its own provider.

These sit outside a removals booking:

• Disconnecting or reconnecting computers, servers or networking equipment
• Backing up or protecting data during the move
• Configuring or testing server equipment after delivery
• Chain-of-custody arrangements for sensitive records
• Make-good or strip-out works at the old premises (cleaning, rubbish removal and handyman work can be booked separately)
• Fit-out at the new premises

If a quote mentions IT relocation, ask exactly what is included, because moving equipment is not the same as disconnecting and reconnecting it.

Goods-in-Transit cover is the provider’s own policy and is recommended rather than mandatory on Urgent Pro removals bookings. Ask for the policy limits and exclusions in writing before the move. Whether a policy covers data loss, business interruption or damage caused when a third party reconnects equipment is a question for the insurer and for your own business insurance.

Providers on the Urgent Pro office removalist network hold their own ABN and carry public liability insurance to a $10M standard. The provider’s name and ABN appear on the booking confirmation. Ask the provider for their Goods-in-Transit policy details when you collect quotes.

Post-Move: Settlement, Close-Out, and the First Week

Staff, particularly IT staff, should be operational on the first day at the new location. It is the IT provider’s responsibility to complete reconnection and the business’s responsibility to confirm it has been done before people arrive. Plan for larger network connections to take longer. A mobile hotspot from the day-one essentials kit covers business connectivity if reconnection is not complete on time.

Tackle the operationally critical parts of the business first. The priority on day one is phones, internet, and staff workstations. Unpacking archive files and arranging pictures on walls can wait. Give staff a short orientation covering emergency exits, facilities, parking, alarm codes, and kitchen use before they settle in.

Record visible damage on the inventory, or tell Urgent Pro by phone, within 48 hours of delivery. Damage you only find when unpacking has a 7-day written claim window from completion of delivery.

A one-week check-in helps identify what is and is not working. Misplaced workstations, a supplier still sending to the old address, or a missing cable run are all easier to fix while the move is recent. Staff feedback in this window is genuinely useful.

The make-good contractor attends the old site once the physical move is complete. Before they start, walk the old premises and compare the current condition against the lease exit clause to identify any works the landlord may be responsible for. Raise any disputes regarding lease obligations before the make-good works are under way, not after the contractor bills.

Return all keys and access cards to the building manager and obtain a written acknowledgement of receipt. Keep this letter as evidence in the event of any lease-end dispute.

For how removals bookings work on Urgent Pro, see the removalist services overview.

Common Mistakes That Delay Office Moves

Leaving make-good until the final week. Make-good is a hard lease obligation with a deadline. Contractors need lead time and a scoping visit. Arranging it in the last week of the lease produces a rushed, expensive job.

Expecting after-hours building access to be automatic. Written approval is required at both sites. A property manager’s verbal authorisation for after-hours access is of no value if they are off-duty on move day.

Not labelling the furniture itself. Numbered destination labels on boxes are of no use if the desk or cabinet itself is not also labelled. Unlabelled furniture goes wherever the crew places it.

Not notifying address change recipients until after the move. Address changes are not instant, so start the notification list three weeks before the move to avoid mail going to the old address.

Assuming nothing will go wrong. Build buffer time into the schedule at every phase and keep a contingency for variations.