Most office moves in Charlotte go wrong in the same place, and it isn’t the furniture. It’s the stuff nobody owns: the internet circuit that was ordered too late, the phone numbers that haven’t ported, the badge readers that went in after the ceiling closed, the shared drive half the team can’t find on Monday.
We handle moves and build-outs around Charlotte for law firms, banks, coworking operators and other offices. This is the checklist we work from, in the order it matters.
8 to 12 weeks out: decide what’s moving and what isn’t
Start with an inventory, not a floor plan. Write down every device and service the office runs on:
- Computers, printers, scanners and anything plugged into the network
- Your internet service and who the account is in the name of
- Phone numbers, including fax lines and the main number on your online business listings
- Servers, network storage or a remote desktop setup
- Door access, cameras and alarm panels
- Software licenses and who has the admin logins
That last one is where moves stall. If a former employee or a previous IT company holds the admin password to your firewall, phone system or email platform, sort that out now, not the week of the move.
This is also the right time to ask whether everything should make the trip. One law firm we worked with used their move to get off a remote server and onto cloud file storage, with an exception list for the few files that couldn’t transfer so nothing went missing quietly. If you’ve been meaning to retire an old server, a move is the natural deadline.
8 weeks out: order internet for the new space
Business internet is usually the longest lead time on the whole project, especially in new construction or a building your provider hasn’t served before. Order it early, confirm the install date in writing, and find out where the provider will bring the line into the building.
If you can, order a second connection from a different provider. When the primary line goes down, a backup line keeps phones and cloud apps running.
6 to 8 weeks out: walk the space and plan the cabling
Walk the new space with whoever is doing your network cabling before the walls are finished. You want to mark:
- Every desk, conference room, printer and TV location
- Where wireless access points go, usually on the ceiling, spread for coverage rather than convenience
- Camera and door reader locations
- Where the network rack or closet lives, and whether it has power and ventilation
Cabling done after drywall costs more and looks worse. Label and test every run before anyone moves in. We’ve traced slow workstations to cabling before. In one office, machines were connecting at 100 Mbps instead of gigabit, and the fault was in the cable runs, not the computers. Test results at handoff catch that early.
More on this on our structured cabling page.
6 weeks out: start the phone number port
If you’re keeping your numbers, and you almost always should, start the port early. On the cloud phone projects we manage, porting usually takes about two weeks once the paperwork is right, but rejected port requests are common when the account name, address or PIN doesn’t match the old carrier’s records exactly. Leave room for one round of corrections.
A move is also a good time to look at the phone system itself. If you’re still on an old on-site phone system, switching to a cloud system means the phones work wherever there’s internet, including the new office before the movers arrive. See our VoIP phone systems page.
4 to 6 weeks out: plan doors and cameras
Access control and cameras need cable, power and sometimes door hardware that a locksmith or the general contractor has to coordinate. For a bank opening a new Charlotte office, we scheduled the access control install around the build-out so readers went in at the right stage, not after the fact.
Decide early:
- Which doors get readers, and who gets access to what
- Whether badges, phones or both will open doors
- Where cameras go, and who owns the camera account. It should be your company, not an employee or the installer.
Our cameras and access control page walks through the options.
2 weeks out: lock down the cutover plan
Write down who does what on move day. At a minimum:
- When the network goes live at the new space, and how you’ll test it
- When phones forward or switch over
- Who unplugs, labels and packs computers, and who sets them back up
- What happens to the old space: equipment returned, internet cancelled, keys and badges collected
Cancel old services only after the new ones are confirmed working. Plenty of businesses cancel their old internet a day early and spend move day on hotspots.
Move week: be on site
Have someone from your IT side physically there for the first morning in the new office. Things to check before staff sit down:
- Every workstation connects, at full speed
- Wi-Fi covers conference rooms and the far corners
- Printers and scanners work, including scan-to-email or scan-to-folder
- Phones ring through, voicemail works, and the main number reaches a person
- Door readers open for the right people and the cameras are recording
Doing this onsite is the whole point. A remote checklist won’t find the conference room with no signal.
After the move: clean up
Within a couple of weeks, update your address on your online business listings, website, invoices and with your vendors. Collect any equipment left behind, confirm the old circuits are actually cancelled, and update your network diagram and documentation so the next person isn’t guessing.
Who should own all this?
Whoever owns it needs to be able to talk to the landlord, the general contractor, the internet provider, the phone carrier and the cabling crew. That’s why many businesses hand the IT side of a move to one team. We plan it, coordinate it, show up for it and support it afterward. Learn more on our office move IT page, or see how we run ongoing support on our managed IT page.
Planning a move or build-out? We’ll walk the space with you and scope the IT side. Talk to us about your move.
Frequently asked questions
How far in advance should we plan IT for an office move?
Start about 8 to 12 weeks out. Business internet and phone number porting usually take the longest, and cabling needs to happen before the walls and ceilings are finished.
How long does it take to port business phone numbers?
On the cloud phone projects we manage, porting usually takes about two weeks once the paperwork matches the old carrier’s records. Leave extra time in case a port request is rejected and has to be resubmitted.
Should we run new network cabling in the new office?
Usually, yes. Plan cable for every desk, access point, camera and door reader before drywall, and have every run labeled and tested. Old or poorly installed cabling can hold computers back to slower speeds.
Can we keep our phone numbers when we move?
In most cases, yes. Numbers can be ported to a new provider or kept on a cloud phone system that works at the new address as soon as the internet is live.
Do you help with office moves outside Charlotte?
We’re based in Charlotte and handle moves and build-outs across the Charlotte area. Contact us to talk about your location.