Your mover moves offices every weekend. You move an office once every seven years. That asymmetry is where office relocations go wrong: the mover knows exactly what has to happen, and the company finds out in real time. This checklist closes the gap. It is the client's side of the plan, week by week, written for the office manager or facilities lead who just got handed the project.
One framing note before the timeline. A good commercial mover carries a lot of this for you, and the mover's side of the plan is its own published document. But there are decisions only you can make and information only you hold, and the earlier you make and surface them, the cheaper the move gets. That is what this list is about.
Twelve weeks out: decisions
Everything at this stage is a decision, not a task, and each one blocks something downstream.
- Name one project owner. One person with authority to answer questions and sign changes. Committees plan moves that crews cannot execute.
- Set the budget and get it approved. Include the quiet line items people forget: new furniture, IT circuits, restoration of the old space, and overlap rent if the dates do not line up.
- Read both leases now. The one you are leaving and the one you are signing. The old lease hides two expensive clauses: the notice date and the restoration or “make-good” obligation, which can require removing everything down to broom-clean condition. If yours does, that is a decommissioning project riding alongside the move, and it needs its own plan.
- Book mover walkthroughs. Serious commercial quotes come from a site survey of both addresses, not from a phone call. Large moves want 8 to 12 weeks of mover lead time, so the walkthroughs happen now.
Eight weeks out: pick the mover
Three checks separate a commercial mover from a company that will learn on your furniture:
- Verify the licenses yourself. A California household goods and commercial mover carries a CAL T number from the Bureau of Household Goods and Services and a federal USDOT number, and both are checkable in public databases in under a minute. A mover who hesitates when you ask for them has answered your question.
- Demand a written project quote. Crew count, number of trucks, phases, and the off-hours schedule, priced before you sign. A commercial move quoted as a vague hourly guess is a change-order machine.
- Ask about the certificate of insurance before your building does. Commercial buildings require a COI naming the property before a mover gets dock access. A mover who issues one promptly on request has done this before; a mover who has to find out what that means has not.
If you want the longer version of how to vet any mover, we wrote a whole guide on spotting a rogue mover. The commercial stakes are higher, and the checks are the same.
Six weeks out: shrink the move
The cheapest thing to move is the thing you do not move. Six weeks out is the last comfortable window to make the office smaller:
- Purge the paper. Archive what must be kept. Records with legal destruction requirements go to a NAID-certified shredding vendor with chain-of-custody documentation; that is a certification worth insisting on for that specific job.
- Decide the fate of surplus furniture. Every desk has four exits: it moves, it sells, it donates, or it is disposed of responsibly. Deciding at the loading dock on move night is how furniture ends up in the most expensive category.
- Start the employee communication plan. Date, new address, parking, what each person packs, what happens to their monitor. Two announcements minimum: one now, one the week before.
Four weeks out: the paper and the plan
- Finalize the floor plan with numbered seats. Every desk, chair, and monitor gets a destination number. Everything the crew touches will be labeled against this plan, and it is the difference between placement and a guessing game.
- Lock the IT cutover. Pick the maintenance window with your IT team or vendor. Order new circuits and internet service now if you have not: business installs are routinely quoted in weeks, and an office without internet is not moved, it is stranded.
- Send the mover's COI to both buildings. Then reserve the freight elevators and dock windows at both ends. A good mover coordinates this directly with the property managers; your job is introducing them early.
- Draft the address-change list. Google Business Profile, bank, insurance, state filings, payroll, vendors, website, invoices, and the sign on the old door. Start it now; finish it the week after the move.
Two weeks out: people
- Tell employees exactly what they pack. The standard split: employees pack personal items and desk contents into provided crates; the crew handles furniture, technology, and everything shared. Ambiguity here costs hours on move night.
- Arrange crew access. Badges or escorts, parking, alarm codes or a security contact for the after-hours window. The crew that waits in the lobby for thirty minutes is on the clock.
- Inventory the keys. Desk keys, file cabinet keys, server cabinet keys. Locked furniture with lost keys is a recurring move-night surprise, and it is never a fun one.
Move week
- Walk both sites with the mover's project manager. Final inventory, final floor plan, final schedule. Changes after this walkthrough go in writing.
- Build the contact sheet. Mover's project manager, your IT lead, both building contacts, and the one person from your side with authority, on one page, with cell numbers.
- Keep your weekend crew small. Two or three people from your side with authority to decide. A move weekend with twelve helpful employees is slower than one with two decisive ones.
The Monday after
- Walk the punch list with the mover's project manager before the crew is released: placement, damage check, anything left behind.
- Close out the old space. Restoration obligations, final walkthrough with the old landlord, keys returned, utilities ended.
- Finish the address audit from week four, and write down what you would do differently while it is fresh. The notes are for the next lease, and there is always a next lease.
Who owns what
The recurring failure in office moves is a task both sides assumed the other owned. This is the honest division of labor on a well-run project:
| The mover owns | You own | Decided together |
|---|---|---|
| Crews, trucks, equipment, and the load plan | The budget, the dates, and the floor plan decisions | The move schedule and its phases |
| Furniture disassembly, transport, and reconfiguration | Employee communication and what each person packs | The labeling and numbering system |
| COI paperwork and building coordination logistics | Lease obligations at both ends | The IT cutover window |
| Disconnect, wrap, reconnect, and power-on verification | Vendor contracts: internet, phones, security, signage | What moves, what sells, what donates, what stays |
If a mover cannot tell you which column a task belongs in, that is the planning gap talking, and it will reappear at the worst possible hour of a Saturday night.
The other half of this plan
This checklist is your side. The mover's side, walkthrough to written quote to floor plan to weekend execution to Monday handoff, is published on our office moving page, milestone by milestone. Put the two side by side and you have the whole project. And if the dates between your two leases refuse to line up, that gap is what business storage exists for: the office goes into our warehouse instead of into a scramble.
Silicon Valley Moving & Storage has moved Bay Area offices since 1990. If the project on your desk looks like the one in this checklist, tell us the two addresses and we will bring the other half of the plan.