Office moves can be logistical nightmares if you don’t have a plan of action. If you don’t read another word of this blog – at least download our Commercial Planning Calendar and check out our Tips for Moving Offices.

Most folks know that we take care of residential clients who are moving their household belongings, however we also move commercial and industrial businesses as well as government and educational facilities. In fact, this is one of our specialties.

Here’s what you need to know for your next office move:

1) When are you moving? Give a moving company a heads up at least one month before your move. If you are a smaller company, you can get away with a little less time, a bigger company, better to give more notice.

2) What’s it gonna cost? So while obvious, the #1 thing to know (after you have the location picked out!) is how much your move is going to cost so you can budget for the transition. There are many parts to an office move – the phone lines, the internet connection, who gets what office, notifying clients and vendors, new stationary, and the list goes on. In most instances, the biggest cost of office moving is employee downtime – just consider the number of hours used in preparation for the move, the actual move itself and then lastly, getting back up and running again.

# of hrs of downtime x # of employees x avg hourly cost of employees = cost of downtime

Our job, as a moving company, is to do our absolute best to reduce the cost of this downtime so that you can get back to taking care of your customers, and making money as soon as possible.

How do we do this? And what you should ask of your moving company…

• We do extensive planning and organizing. We have a pre-move meeting with your employees so that they know exactly how to help us get their belongings from their old desk to their new desk. An employee who cannot locate their belongings or files in the new location will waste time and money, not to mention be incredibly frustrated. We also show employees how they can be efficient in their packing of their belongings – again, saving time.

• We are on schedule so that other trades can get in and out before and after us. We certainly don’t want to hold up the line.

• We have the right equipment for efficient office moves – everything from book carts, to panel carts to 4 wheel dollies and commercial bins make the move process tremendously more efficient.

• We have professional, experienced crews. ALL of OUR employees are background checked, drug-screened, trained, insured, bonded, covered by workman’s compensation and uniformed. Office moves often require some kind of confidentiality or security, with our crews, this is not an issue.

3) Whatever you do – DON’T take the low-ball estimate. First – you must know that in the moving industry there is a dirty little word called “change-order” that can add significant amounts of unexpected, unestimated cost to your move. In fact, most low-ballers count on these change-orders to make up for the low-ball price they gave you on the estimate. Second – if the low-ball company is unprofessional (often the case), they will cost you hoards of money through employee downtime, you can count on it. It will certainly be more than the amount of difference between them and the rest of the competition. I cannot stress this enough.

If you want to find out more about Exodus Moving & Storage and our experience with Office Moves, please check us out here.