The IT is usually the last thing anyone plans and the first thing that goes wrong, because it's tangled up with the lease, the phone lines, the landlord's reinstatement clause and a deadline that doesn't move. Here's the version that works backwards from the day you hand back the keys.
Not the move date — the date the space must be empty and reinstated. Everything else schedules against it. Then subtract a week, because something always slips.
Including the places nobody thinks of: the comms cupboard, the ceiling void, the reception desk, the warehouse office, the copier room. Record what's there and photograph it. Building the asset list.
Leased IT, financed hardware, the landlord's fixtures, the copier on a service contract, the alarm and CCTV, carrier-owned routers. Each has its own return process and its own penalty for getting it wrong. Lease returns.
Internet, phone, and any dedicated circuits. Notice periods of 30 to 90 days are normal and billing continues until they expire regardless of whether you've moved. This is the one that most often gets missed.
A move is a good moment to retire equipment rather than pay to transport it twice. Anything five years or older is usually cheaper to replace at the other end than to move, insure and re-rack.
Send the list before you commit, because the gap between scrap value and resale value on servers and recent laptops is usually significant and it offsets the cost of the move.
Equipment goes missing during moves — it's the single most common time for it. Destroy or wipe what isn't travelling while the building is still orderly, and get the certificate before boxes start moving.
Structured cabling, racks, wall-mounted brackets, server room air conditioning, badge readers. Reinstatement clauses are routinely enforced and the bill for the landlord doing it for you is never the cheap option.
Destruction certificates, lease return confirmations, disconnection confirmations, the disposal settlement. For a closure in particular, somebody will ask for these months later when the entity is already wound down.
Separate it into four groups first: equipment going to another site, equipment to be sold, equipment to be destroyed, and equipment that belongs to someone else such as leased hardware and carrier routers. Deal with the data on anything leaving your control before the move begins, because moves are when equipment goes missing. Then get the disposal pile valued, as servers and recent laptops often cover a meaningful part of the move cost.
Start four to six weeks before the handover date for a typical office. The physical collection takes a day, but circuit disconnection notice periods run 30 to 90 days, lease returns have their own deadlines, and building access for a large collection often needs arranging a week or more ahead. Working backwards from the date the space must be empty is more reliable than working forwards.
Usually the tenant, under a reinstatement or make-good clause. Many commercial leases require the space to be returned to its original condition, which covers structured cabling, racks, wall brackets and sometimes server room air conditioning. Read the clause early, because the landlord arranging the work and billing you is invariably more expensive than doing it yourself.
Usually yes, if we know what is coming. Send the asset list in advance so the right vehicle and crew are scheduled, and tell us about access constraints such as loading dock times, lift bookings or out-of-hours restrictions. For larger sites we can also destroy drives on-site during the same visit so nothing readable leaves the building.
It is recycled responsibly rather than dumped, and that should be part of the same collection at no extra cost on a load with some value in it. You should receive documentation covering the recycled items as well as the ones you were paid for, because the environmental record matters for the same audits as the data record.
Send us the list and the handover date, and we'll work backwards with you. Free pickup across South Florida.