Moving Offices? Start the IT Checklist 90 Days Out
The internet circuit is the long pole in every office move, and almost nobody orders it early enough. A 90-day IT relocation plan for Denver-area businesses.
Office moves go wrong in a predictable way. The furniture arrives, the desks get assembled, everyone shows up Monday morning — and there's no internet, because the fiber install is scheduled for three weeks out and nobody knew that when the lease was signed.
The office move IT checklist below is organized by lead time rather than by category, because in a relocation the only thing that really matters is what has to be ordered first. Circuits and cabling are the long poles. Everything else can be compressed.
If you're moving within the Denver metro, one more thing worth knowing up front: fiber availability varies enormously building to building. A converted warehouse in RiNo, a 1970s tower downtown, and a new build in the Tech Center are three completely different conversations, and the leasing agent's "the building has fiber" is not the same as "there is fiber into the suite you're renting."
90 Days Out: Answer the Questions That Take Months
Before you sign the lease, if at all possible:
- Which carriers actually serve the building? Not the neighborhood — the building. Ask the landlord which providers already have equipment in the MPOE (the building's demarcation point) and which have riser access.
- Is there existing conduit and riser space from the building entrance to your suite, and who controls it? Some buildings require you to use a specific vendor for anything in the risers.
- What's in the suite already? Existing cabling might be perfectly good Cat6, or it might be abandoned Cat5e from three tenants ago that goes to jacks in the wrong places.
- Where can the network equipment live? You need a lockable space with power, ventilation, and enough depth for a rack. A closet with no airflow will cook a switch stack in July.
- What are the landlord's rules for after-hours access, freight elevator booking, and contractor insurance requirements? These will constrain your entire schedule.
Then start these clocks:
- Order the internet circuit. Business fiber commonly takes 30 to 120 days depending on whether construction is required, and it can require a Letter of Authorization from the landlord before the carrier will even survey. This is the single most common cause of a delayed move-in. Order it the week the lease is signed.
- Order a second, different circuit if the business can't operate offline — ideally from a different provider over a different physical path.
- Book a site survey for cabling and wireless with your IT provider, against the actual floor plan.
60 Days Out: Design and Order
Cabling. Work from the furniture plan, not from where the jacks currently are. Decisions to make:
- Two drops minimum per desk position; more where docking stations, desk phones, and monitors converge
- Cat6 or Cat6A — 6A costs more and is the right call if you're pulling for a ten-year horizon or running high-power PoE devices
- Drops for wireless access points, printers, cameras, door controllers, TVs, and conference room equipment — these are the ones people forget until installation day
- Every drop labeled at both ends, and a printed port map left in the rack
Hardware. A move is the natural moment to decide whether the gear is coming with you. Moving a five-year-old switch into a new office buys you a fresh install of an old problem. If your existing kit is showing the signs your network infrastructure needs an upgrade, replace it as part of the project rather than moving it and replacing it six months later.
Order early either way — network hardware lead times are still unpredictable.
The server room. If you're still running physical servers, this is the best opportunity you'll get to ask whether they need to move at all. Relocating a server rack is risk you can sometimes simply delete by migrating the workload first. Our cloud migration work often starts exactly here, and why Denver businesses are moving to the cloud covers the trade-offs.
If servers are staying physical: confirm dedicated circuits, adequate cooling, UPS capacity, and that the room isn't below a bathroom. (Ask why we mention it.)
Phones. Update the service address, register the new 911 dispatchable location for every device and every floor or suite, and if you're porting numbers, submit the port requests now — 2 to 4 weeks is normal and the request will be rejected at least once over a detail mismatch.
The address change list. Start it now, because it's longer than anyone expects: Google Business Profile, website, invoices and quote templates, email signatures, business licenses and registrations, insurance, bank and merchant accounts, payroll, vendor records, shipping accounts, letterhead, and every online directory you're listed in. Inconsistent address information across the web directly undercuts local search visibility, and it takes weeks to clean up after the fact.
30 Days Out: Build and Stage
- Cabling installed and tested, with certification results handed over — not just "it lights up"
- Rack, patch panels, and switches mounted and powered in the new space
- Circuit installed and tested, ideally with a temporary connection you can verify before move day. Insist on testing throughput yourself rather than accepting "the light is green."
- Firewall configured for the new WAN, with any static IPs and VPN endpoints updated
- Wireless installed and surveyed in the real space, with real walls — predictive designs are a starting point, not a result
- Printers, cameras, door access, and alarm systems scheduled with their vendors, coordinated with your IT timeline
- Write the cutover runbook: what moves when, who's responsible, what the rollback is, and who to call at 6am
- Tell your staff what to expect and what to bring, and confirm who can work remotely if something slips
Move Week: Sequence Matters
- Keep the old circuit live for 2 to 4 weeks after the move. The overlap costs a month of service and saves the entire project when something isn't ready.
- Move in phases if you can — a pilot group first, everyone else once the new space is proven.
- Back up everything before anything is unplugged, and verify the backup restores. Hardware in transit is hardware at risk.
- Move servers and network gear last out and first in. Nothing else can be tested until they're up.
- Transport equipment properly. Racked equipment should be removed, padded, and moved separately — not rolled across a parking lot in a rack. Confirm your mover's insurance actually covers electronics.
- Update DNS records that point at office IPs, and mind the TTLs — lower them a few days ahead so changes propagate quickly.
- Don't schedule the move for month-end, quarter-end, or your busiest week. And in Denver, don't schedule an outdoor-dependent move for a week in March when a foot of wet snow is a real possibility.
Day One and the Week After
- Walk every desk: network, phone, printer, docking station, monitor
- Test Wi-Fi coverage in the corners, the conference rooms, and the break room where everyone actually sits
- Confirm the phone system routes correctly, including after-hours and voicemail
- Verify 911 location data by coordinating a test with your provider
- Check that alarms, door access, and cameras report correctly
- Keep an open punch list and work it daily for a week
Then finish the address change list. All of it. The one everybody forgets is Google Business Profile, and it's the one that most affects whether local customers can find you.
Frequently Asked Questions
How early should we really start? Ninety days before move-in for the IT side, and before signing the lease for the circuit and building questions. If you have 30 days, the plan is different: a temporary connection, wireless failover, and staged staff moves.
Can we just move our existing internet service? Sometimes, if the same carrier serves both buildings — and even then it's a new install with its own timeline, not a transfer. Treat it as a new order.
What if the new building only has one carrier? Then that carrier is a single point of failure, and an LTE/5G failover connection stops being optional.
Do we need new cabling if the suite already has some? Get it tested and mapped before deciding. Existing cable is often fine, occasionally not, and always in the wrong places relative to your furniture plan.
Planning a Move?
The businesses that have smooth moves aren't lucky. They ordered the circuit in month one and worked backward from move-in.
netkraft plans and executes IT relocations for Denver-area businesses — carrier ordering, cabling design and management, network build, phone porting and 911 registration, and a cutover runbook that accounts for what happens if something isn't ready.
Contact netkraft before you sign the lease if you can, or read more about our network setup and configuration work.