Office Move IT Timeline: When to Start Planning

An office move is one of the most complex projects a UK business will ever undertake. Between lease negotiations, fit-out contractors, staff communications, and client notifications, the sheer volume of moving parts can be overwhelming. Yet amidst all this activity, one of the most critical workstreams — your IT relocation — is frequently left until dangerously late in the process.

The consequences of poor IT planning during an office move are severe and immediate. Staff arrive at the new premises on day one to discover phones that do not work, internet connections that are not live, printers that cannot be found on the network, and critical business applications that are inaccessible. Productivity collapses, client commitments are missed, and what should be an exciting new chapter becomes a frustrating and expensive disaster.

This comprehensive timeline guides you through every IT-related task you need to complete before, during, and after your office move, with clear milestones and deadlines measured backwards from your move date.

Six Months Before the Move: Strategic Planning

Six months before your planned move date is when IT planning should formally begin. At this stage, many of the decisions you make are strategic rather than tactical, but they will determine the success or failure of everything that follows.

Audit Your Current IT Estate

Start by conducting a thorough audit of your existing technology. Document every server, workstation, laptop, printer, phone, network switch, firewall, access point, and cable run in your current office. Note the age, condition, and warranty status of each item. Identify equipment that is approaching end-of-life and would benefit from replacement as part of the move rather than being transported to the new premises.

This audit serves multiple purposes. It gives you an accurate picture of what needs to move, what should be replaced, and what can be decommissioned. It also provides the data your IT provider or internal team needs to plan the new office infrastructure accurately.

Assess Your New Premises

Before signing a lease — or as early as possible afterwards — conduct a detailed IT assessment of the new premises. This should cover the availability and capacity of existing network cabling, the location and capacity of the server room or comms cupboard, the electrical capacity and distribution, the availability of internet services at the address, mobile signal strength throughout the building, and the suitability of the space for your wireless network requirements.

Many businesses discover too late that their new premises lack adequate network cabling, have insufficient power for their server room, or are in an area where high-speed internet connections require lengthy installation lead times. Identifying these issues at six months gives you time to address them without impacting your move schedule.

Order Internet Connectivity

This is arguably the single most important IT task in the entire move timeline, and the one that catches most businesses out. In the UK, a new leased line internet connection typically takes between 60 and 90 working days to install, and in some cases longer if civil works (digging up pavements to lay fibre) are required. Standard business broadband connections from providers like BT, Virgin Media Business, or TalkTalk Business can take 2–4 weeks, but rarely deliver the reliability and speed that a business relying on cloud services needs.

Order your internet connectivity as early as possible — ideally six months before the move. If your new premises already have a live connection from a previous tenant, establish whether you can take over that circuit or whether a new installation is required. If you need a new leased line, begin the wayleave and survey process immediately.

Four Months Before: Infrastructure Design

With strategic decisions made and connectivity ordered, the four-month mark is when detailed infrastructure design begins. This is where your IT provider or internal team translates the requirements from your audit and premises assessment into a concrete technical plan.

Network Cabling Design

Work with a qualified cabling contractor to design the network infrastructure for your new office. Specify the number and location of data points, the category of cabling (Cat6a is the current recommendation for future-proofing), the location of patch panels and network cabinets, and any requirements for fibre optic runs between floors or buildings.

A common rule of thumb is to install 20–30% more data points than you currently need. The marginal cost of additional cable runs during a fit-out is minimal compared to the disruption and expense of retrofitting cables after you have moved in. Every desk position should have at least two data points, and consider additional points for printers, wireless access points, CCTV cameras, and meeting room AV equipment.

Server Room and Network Cabinet Planning

If you are maintaining on-premises servers, plan the server room or comms cupboard carefully. Consider cooling requirements (servers generate significant heat), power requirements (including UPS backup), physical security (restricted access), fire suppression, and cable management. Even if your primary infrastructure is in the cloud, you will still need at least one network cabinet to house your firewall, switches, and patch panels.

Two Months Before: Detailed Preparation

At the two-month mark, planning transitions into active preparation. Cabling installation should be underway or scheduled, equipment orders should be arriving, and your IT provider should be building and configuring new hardware ready for deployment.

Pre-Stage Equipment

One of the most effective strategies for minimising downtime during an office move is pre-staging. This means building, configuring, and testing new equipment at your IT provider's premises or in a dedicated staging area before deploying it to the new office. Servers can be racked, configured, loaded with data, and tested. Workstations can be set up, software installed, and user profiles migrated. Network equipment can be configured and tested.

Pre-staging transforms the move-day experience from a chaotic scramble to a structured deployment. Instead of spending the first week in the new office troubleshooting configuration issues, your team arrives to find equipment that is already working and simply needs to be powered on and connected.

Plan the Migration Sequence

Not everything can move at once, and attempting to relocate your entire IT estate in a single weekend is a recipe for disaster. Plan a phased migration sequence that prioritises critical systems and minimises business disruption. Typically, the sequence looks something like this: network infrastructure first (switches, firewalls, access points), then servers and core applications, then telephony, then user workstations and peripherals, and finally non-essential equipment like meeting room AV and digital signage.

Recommended IT workstream timeline showing when each phase should begin relative to the move date

One Month Before: Final Preparations

The final month before your move is about confirming everything is on track and handling the details that ensure a smooth transition.

Confirm Internet Connectivity

By now, your new internet connection should be installed or have a confirmed installation date. If there have been delays, this is the time to escalate urgently and arrange a temporary backup connection. A 4G or 5G business broadband service can provide a workable interim solution if your primary connection is not ready on move day. Providers like Three Business and EE Business offer rapid deployment with reasonable bandwidth for temporary use.

Complete Full Backups

Before any equipment is disconnected or transported, ensure complete verified backups of all data, configurations, and system states. This includes server data and databases, user files and documents, email archives, network device configurations (router, firewall, switch configs), printer configurations and drivers, and application settings and licence keys. Test your backup restores — do not simply verify that backup files exist. A backup that cannot be restored is worthless.

Communicate with Staff

Your staff need to know what to expect during the move, particularly regarding IT. Send clear communications covering what time to arrive at the new office, how to connect to the network and log in, who to contact if they experience IT issues, what has changed (new phone numbers, printer locations, Wi-Fi details), and any temporary workarounds that may be in place during the first few days.

Move Weekend: Execution

The move weekend itself should be the most straightforward part of the process if the preceding months of planning have been thorough. Your IT team or provider should be on-site at the new premises before the moving lorries arrive, ready to receive equipment, connect devices, and resolve any issues in real time.

Key activities during the move weekend include connecting and testing the network infrastructure, deploying servers and verifying connectivity to cloud services, setting up and testing the phone system, deploying workstations to desks, connecting and testing printers and peripherals, verifying Wi-Fi coverage throughout the office, and testing critical business applications end-to-end.

Have a dedicated IT help desk resource available from the moment staff arrive at the new office on Monday morning. The first few hours will inevitably generate a spike of support requests as people discover issues with their specific setups, and having someone available to resolve these quickly makes the difference between a successful move and a chaotic one.

First Two Weeks: Stabilisation and Snagging

Do not assume the move is complete when staff are at their desks on Monday. The first two weeks in a new office are a stabilisation period during which niggling issues surface and need resolving. Common post-move snags include Wi-Fi dead spots in areas that were not tested under full occupancy, printers that are not discovered by all workstations, phone system routing issues, meeting room AV equipment that needs calibration, and VPN or remote access configurations that need updating.

Schedule a formal IT snagging review at the end of the second week. Walk through the entire office, test every system, and document any outstanding issues. This ensures nothing falls through the cracks and gives your team confidence that the infrastructure is solid.