The guide
IT and Server Relocation in a London Office Move in full
Lead times: the only part you cannot compress
A crew can strip and rebuild a 60-desk floor over a weekend. Nobody can install a leased line in the same window. Circuit delivery in central London routinely runs six to twelve weeks, and a wayleave in a multi-let building can add more, so the order goes in before the crates are even discussed.
Run the old and new connections in parallel for at least a fortnight. Paying two months of overlap is far cheaper than a Monday with no internet, and it lets you cut over in a controlled way rather than under pressure.
Hackney: Sign-off in Hackney follows the same shape every time. One named contact approves the switchover window, the managing agent approves the RAMS and insurance pack, and the IT lead owns the comms room. We survey both addresses before quoting, so the number on the purchase order is the number invoiced.
- Order circuits and confirm wayleave permissions 10–12 weeks out
- Book structured cabling and patching so the floor is live before move weekend
- Keep the outgoing line running two weeks past the move date
- Confirm number porting dates with your telecoms provider in writing
Decommissioning the comms room
Photograph the rack front and back before a single cable is pulled. Those photographs are what the rebuild is measured against, and they settle every argument about what was patched where.
Label both ends of every cable, bag and tag rack screws and shelf hardware, and shut down in the documented order — switches, then storage, then hosts — rather than by whichever plug is nearest. Anything in a rack travels bolted into purpose-built cases or a shock-mounted rack trolley, never on a flat trolley with a blanket over it.
Hackney: Timing in Hackney: buildings here — warehouse conversions, studios and coworking — rarely release a goods lift during trading hours, so the switchover typically starts after close of business on a Friday and hands back a working floor for Monday. With 170,000 people employed across the borough, the weekend window exists so that nobody loses a working day.
Desks, docks and the seating plan
Every desk position at the destination gets a number that matches the floor plan, and every monitor arm, dock, keyboard and headset travels in a crate carrying that number. That is the whole trick: the crew is not deciding where anything goes, they are matching labels.
Staff pack their own pedestal and personal items into a numbered crate. IT handles anything with a cable. Splitting it that way avoids the classic Monday problem of a dock sitting in someone's pedestal on the other side of the floor.
Hackney: What it means for the paperwork here: London Borough of Hackney handles bay suspensions and any highway permit for Hackney, while the managing agent handles passes, lift slots and contractor induction. Both are prepared as one document set in your name and submitted five to ten working days ahead, which is the standard lead time across the borough.
- Number every destination desk position and mirror it on the crate labels
- IT strips and re-terminates all screens, docks and handsets
- Photograph unusual setups — dual-arm mounts, sit-stand controllers, trading positions
- Keep a small spares box: power leads, display cables, patch leads
Rebuild sequence and the Monday floorwalk
The comms room goes back first and is tested before the floor fills, because a desk you rebuild against a dead patch panel is a desk you rebuild twice. Once the network answers, the crew works the floor in plan order while IT follows behind logging in at each position.
Book a floorwalk for the first two hours of the first working morning. The list is always the same shape — a dead port, a missing dock, a printer that needs re-adding — and it is a thirty-minute job on the day rather than a week of tickets.
Hackney: Applied to Hackney: 27,095 registered businesses sit in this borough and 170,000 people work here, so the step above is usually run for a ten to fifty desk suite rather than a whole tower. 89.6% of firms here employ fewer than ten people, which is why the survey and the switchover normally fit into one weekend.