Closed Friday, open Monday. Here is the playbook for office moves that minimise the business interruption and the IT downtime.
A business office relocation is a project, not a moving day — the IT cutover window, employee communication, lease overlap and out-of-hours crew availability all matter more than the lorry size. An office move is fundamentally different from a residential move. The business has to keep running, the IT needs to be up immediately at the new site, and the cost of downtime typically dwarfs the cost of the removal itself. After forty years of office relocations across Sussex we have a clear approach to minimising the disruption.
The framing: plan twelve weeks ahead, run the move over a weekend or after-hours window, prioritise IT and immediate workstations, and have a clear day-1 desk-allocation plan. The detail below covers each phase. For the residential equivalent see the how-to-prepare guide; this is the business-specific version.
The single biggest predictor of office-move success is the planning lead time. Twelve weeks is the sweet spot for a 20–100 person office. Less than that is doable but cramped; more is sometimes necessary for larger operations (200+ desks, multiple sites, complex IT).
The first four weeks: lease signed at the new property, IT survey of both buildings, broadband and phone-line orders placed (Openreach engineer appointments routinely run 4–6 weeks out in East Sussex), interior fit-out scheduled if needed. The next four weeks: furniture inventory, desk allocation plan, employee communications, packing materials ordered. The final four weeks: pack the non-essential areas, finalise the IT plan, confirm the move-day timeline with us.
Book the survey in week 1 of the plan. The surveyor measures both properties, photographs access points, counts desks and furniture by type, and discusses the move-day schedule. The written quote follows within 48 hours, itemised by phase — packing, transit, unloading, setup at the new property.
The standard office-move pattern is Friday-evening-through-Monday-morning. The business closes Friday at normal close, the crew arrives at 5pm and works through to early Saturday morning packing and loading. Saturday is the lorry transit and the new-property setup; Sunday is for final placement, IT installation and testing; Monday morning the team arrives at functional workstations.
For smaller offices (under 15 people), the move can sometimes happen in a single evening — closed at 5pm, fully moved by midnight, open at the new property by 8am the next morning. For larger offices (100+ desks), a full weekend is the minimum; some moves run across a long bank-holiday weekend.
The Friday-evening start matters because it gives the business a full weekend buffer if anything overruns. The Monday-open is the deadline; the work happens earlier. We’ve never missed a Monday-morning office reopening across the moves we’ve done; the planning buffer is the reason.
The IT is the highest-stakes single category in any office move. Servers, networking equipment, phones, workstations, printers, and the cabling that connects them. If the IT isn’t working Monday morning, the business isn’t working.
The IT plan starts six weeks ahead. The new property is surveyed for cable runs, network sockets, server-room conditions, and power supply. The internal IT team or external IT consultant maps each workstation to its new location with specific port allocations. Cable management plans are drawn up. The disconnection and reconnection schedule is agreed.
On move day, the IT runs ahead of the desk layout. Servers and networking equipment are moved first (sometimes overnight on the Thursday before the main move to give a full day to verify connectivity). Workstations follow on Friday/Saturday. By Sunday afternoon every workstation should be powered, networked, and showing the login screen. The packing electronics guide covers the workstation-side packing technique.
The team arriving Monday morning shouldn’t need to ask where they’re sitting. Each desk should be labelled with the team member’s name. Each office, meeting room and quiet space should be signposted. The toilets, the kitchen, the printer, the post pigeonholes — all signposted clearly for the first week.
Before move day, share a floor plan with the team showing their new desk locations. The first morning is much calmer when everyone knows where they’re heading. For larger teams, an informal welcome event in the new kitchen on the first Monday morning is worth the small cost — coffee, pastries, a moment to acknowledge the change.
Personal items on desks — family photos, plants, mugs, headphones — should be packed by each individual on Friday afternoon. Provide labelled storage boxes a week ahead and ask each team member to pack their own. This is the practical and respectful approach; the alternative (our crew packing personal belongings) is operationally slower and culturally awkward.
Many office moves involve some furniture replacement — new desks for a growing team, ergonomic chairs replacing the older fleet, new meeting-room kit. Coordinate the new furniture deliveries with move day. New furniture typically arrives Friday afternoon or Saturday morning; old furniture is removed at the same time.
Items going into storage rather than the new property — sometimes an office reduces in size or moves to a smaller layout — go to our Lower Dicker depot directly from the old property. Long-term commercial storage works the same as residential: climate-stable strong-room or self-access self-storage depending on the access needs.
For specialist office equipment — safes, secure document storage, large printers, server racks — the same protocols apply as in the heavy items guide. The crew assigned to office moves includes specialists trained on commercial equipment.
The first week at the new property is when small issues surface. A meeting-room phone that won’t connect. A printer that needs new IP-address mapping. A team member whose desk is in the wrong place because of a last-minute swap. Build in a project manager for the first week whose job is to log and resolve these issues quickly.
The IT issues usually concentrate in week 1 day 2–3. By then the volume of usage has hit the new network and any latent issues show up. Schedule the IT team to be on-site or fully available for the first three working days. For complex networks (multiple servers, VPNs, specialist software), week 1 is the testing period.
By the end of week 1, the new office should feel normal. Snags filed and either resolved or scheduled; signage adjusted based on usage patterns; meeting rooms booked normally; the team operating without daily reference to the move. The longest-tail item is usually the post and parcel re-direction — set up Royal Mail business re-direct for 12 months and confirm the new address with all major suppliers and customers in week 1.
We've been a family-run Sussex remover since 1982. Crews are directly employed and trained at our own staff training centre. Pad-wrap on every full removal, removal-grade cartons, BAR Advance Payment Guarantee on every deposit.
120+ independent Google reviews at 4.9/5. Survey, written quote within 48 hours, deposit-protected booking, calm move day. Whichever category your move falls into — routine local, overseas, antiques, business — the approach is the same.
Booking the survey takes ten minutes via the online form.
Free in-home or video survey, written fixed-price quote, BAR-protected deposit. Sussex’s family-run remover since 1982.
Beyond the standard office contents, several specialist categories warrant specific planning. Server racks: substantial weight, careful pre-disconnection by your IT team, lifting equipment for the larger racks. We move the physical equipment; your IT team handles the connectivity setup at the new site. The packing electronics guide covers the workstation-level packing.
Commercial safes and document storage: weight and security considerations. The heavy items guide covers safe-moving methods. For genuinely secure document holding (legal firms, accountants, healthcare records), we coordinate with specialist secure-document carriers where appropriate.
For offices reducing in size, the Lower Dicker storage handles overflow contents that don’t fit the new layout. Commercial storage contracts work the same as residential: climate-stable strong-room storage or self-access self-storage depending on the access frequency. For business-stock holdings (e-commerce inventory, sample stock, archived files), the format choice matters; the choosing storage guide covers it.
For multi-site businesses or office relocations involving phased moves across multiple weeks, the survey conversation gets longer than for a single-day office move. Talk to us at survey early in the planning — ideally before the new lease is signed — and we’ll help structure the timeline.
Booking your move with us is a five-step process. One: enquire via the online quote form or call our office on 01323 848 008. We’ll arrange a survey within a few working days. Two: the survey itself, usually in-home and lasting 30–90 minutes depending on the move complexity. The surveyor walks the property, photographs access points, counts cartons by size, and discusses any specialist requirements.
Three: the written quote, emailed within 48 hours of the survey. Itemised by line so you see what every cost line covers. Four: deposit and date confirmation. Typically 20–25% deposit on confirmation, fully protected under the British Association of Removers’ Advance Payment Guarantee. Five: the move itself. Uniformed crew, our own lorry, no agency labour, blankets washed between jobs.
For pre-move questions, our office is reachable Monday to Friday 8am to 5:30pm and Saturday 9am to 1pm. We’d rather have the customer conversation early than late — a small clarification three weeks before move day saves a meaningful misunderstanding on the day itself. For the wider company history and our forty-year track record across Sussex, the about-us page covers the background.
For your specific move, we look forward to the conversation. Whichever category falls under (a routine local move, a complex international relocation, a specialist antique or office job), the principles are consistent: in-home survey, written itemised quote, deposit-protected booking, crew you can rely on, calm move day, post-move follow-up. That’s the standard we aim for on every job.
Single evening for offices under 15 people. Weekend (Friday evening to Monday morning) for 20–100 desks. Long weekend or staged across two weekends for 100+ desk operations.
12 weeks ahead is the sweet spot. Less than 8 weeks is doable but cramped; more is needed for larger operations or complex IT infrastructure.
We coordinate with your IT team but don't typically handle server configuration. We move the physical hardware; your IT team handles configuration. We can introduce IT specialist firms if you don't have one.
The move-day window is closed-to-the-business. Most moves run Friday evening through Sunday so Monday-morning reopening works. For 24/7 operations we sometimes use a phased approach.
Office moves are priced by floor area and inventory rather than house bedrooms. A 20-person office is roughly equivalent to a large 5-bed residential move.