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.
Tower Hamlets: Access in Tower Hamlets is the part that slips. Security passes and a permit-to-work, goods lift booked with building management, contractor induction before the first shift and a logged sign-in and sign-out on every visit. Tower blocks with goods-lift booking, Canary Wharf estate permits, and CPZs across Bethnal Green and Bow. On top of that, part of the borough sits inside the Congestion Charge zone and all of it inside ULEZ, so both are priced into the project figure rather than invoiced later.
- 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.
Tower Hamlets: Sector mix matters to how this plays out locally: Finance and insurance is the largest employer in Tower Hamlets at 24% of borough jobs, with Professional and legal services at 18%. That shapes what actually gets moved — desk density, server rooms, storage and regulated paperwork all differ by trade, and the survey prices the borough's real mix rather than a generic desk count.
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.
Tower Hamlets: Geography, in practice: Tower Hamlets covers E1, E2, E3, E14 across 14 named areas, and 0.98× as many people work here each weekday as live here. Crews are routed to the loading point for the specific postcode, because the run between two addresses inside one borough is rarely the part that costs time — the lift is.
- 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.
Tower Hamlets: Sign-off in Tower Hamlets 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.