Disaster-Proofing Your Office Move

What happens to your business after a disaster strikes often depends on what you do before the disaster even happens.

Being a relocation coordination firm, it’s easy for us to foresee and prepare for potential hitches in a plan. After all, we’ve “been there, done that” by coordinating dozens of small- to large-scale office moves.

In fact, we’ve known many companies that have decided to coordinate their move themselves and later told us that they wished they had hired us. Why? Because a natural, a technical or a personnel disaster occurred that put them out of business for several days –– or longer. It’s hard to imagine the amount of revenue that each company lost from being out of business, not to mention, the long-term impact to each company’s image.

If your company is planning a move and you’ve never planned an office relocation before, it’s easy to overlook any potential hitches or oversights in the plan. With so many extra tasks to be accomplished during a move, an organization’s resources can be spread extremely thin and little thought might be given to the “what if” scenarios.

As one of the Golden Gate Company’s best practices, the ultimate goal of a successful move is to minimize the impact of a relocation on your company’s day-to-day operations. That being said, special consideration should be given to contingency planning.

The Best Defense Is Always a Good Offense
From our experience, one of the best ways to ensure a successful move is through preparing to avoid any possible disaster. Common disasters that can hit your move include lost or damaged equipment, inadequate space planning, and selecting the wrong vendors.

First, to avoid tragedy through lost or damaged equipment, companies should have a computer contingency plan. This particular plan should have emergency, back-up, recovery, test and maintenance plans. Adequate computer contingency planning should help firms to quickly regain their capabilities to process information, communicate through email and/or their Intranet, and get back in business.

Second, companies often find out too late that their space planning was inadequate and will not actually accommodate their staff after the relocation. Imagine the embarrassment and anguish when you discover this as your furniture is being moved into your new office. But you don’t have to imagine how this can severely destroy your move schedule. We received emergency calls from a company that decided to do their own space planning and found out –– during move weekend –– that their measuring was incorrect. Since they were half-way through their move, there was no way for their employees to resume working until they received the correct-sized cubicles. That’s why we highly recommend that companies have a move coordinator, space planner or furniture vendor double-check their measurements long before the move date to avoid this type of disaster.

Third, the least expensive vendor is not always the best one for your project. Companies should carefully evaluate each vendor from whom they get estimates for their move so the companies can fully understand each vendor’s capabilities and make sure that they can fulfill the job requirements. Finding out over move weekend that your movers can’t complete your job can often make it impossible to resume working on Monday morning. (Or even Tuesday, Wednesday or more mornings!)

In summary, protecting your equipment, double-checking your space planning and selecting the right vendors are just a few ways to protect your move from disaster.

Keep in mind that there are literally thousands of details to consider when moving a company and each company’s contingency plan can vary based on the particular industry, size and scope of your business. But by taking the time to consider potential problems with your move proactively, you’re a step ahead of the game and you improve the likelihood that your company will survive and recover quickly.

For more information regarding your next office relocation, please contact Rachel Walls, President of The Golden Gate Company today: 415.354.4208.