Office moves in Knoxville go wrong in predictable ways, and almost all of them trace back to one thing: IT was told about the move after the lease was signed and the contractor was already framing walls. Here's the order that works.
As soon as the lease is signed
- Order internet. This is the single most common cause of a first-week disaster. Depending on the building and provider, an install can take anywhere from a few days to six weeks. Find out what's actually available at the new address: KUB Fiber, AT&T, Comcast Business or Spectrum, and whether the building already has a demarc. Order early; you can always push the activation date.
- Pick the network closet. Somewhere with power, cooling, a door that locks, and a wall for a rack. Not the break room, not under a sink, not the space that becomes storage.
- Count the drops. Every desk, phone, printer, TV, camera, access point and conference room. Then add a few. Pulling one more cable while the walls are open is cheap; pulling it after is not. See structured cabling.
Four to six weeks out
- Inventory what's moving. Every computer, monitor, printer and piece of network gear, and which of it should be replaced rather than moved. A move is the cheapest time to retire a 2017 desktop.
- Sort out the phones. If you're still on a phone system that lives in the closet, this is when to decide whether it moves or gets replaced with a cloud service.
- Update your address everywhere. Google Business Profile, your website, invoices, email signatures, vendor accounts and, importantly, your domain registrar and Microsoft 365 billing contact.
- Schedule the cabling. It has to be done after framing and before drywall or ceiling tiles. Coordinate with the GC on dates.
The week before
- Verify backups. Restore something. A move is exactly the kind of event that turns a broken backup into a catastrophe.
- Label everything. Every cable, every monitor, every dock, with the person's name and desk location in the new space.
- Confirm the internet is live. Someone should physically see the light on the modem at the new space before moving day.
- Stage the network. Firewall, switches and access points installed and tested in the new closet before any desks arrive.
Moving day
- Network gear and the server, if you still have one, move first and come up first.
- Workstations are placed, connected and powered on one at a time, with someone checking each before moving to the next.
- Printers are the last thing and the first complaint. Have their new IP addresses and driver installs planned.
The first week
Plan for someone to be onsite or on call the first morning. Not because everything will go wrong, but because the ten small things that do go wrong are much less disruptive when they're fixed in ten minutes each. Workflow IT builds that into every office move quote.
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