I’ve been at the same job for seven years, and have naturally gone through a few office moves. Cube to cube, then to office, then to another office, then to a cube, and then back to an office, and still two more office moves after that. The way an office move goes here is this: The employee is given boxes for packing. Everything goes into the boxes except computers and furniture. Some light furniture may be tagged to go along with the move, but desks and other heavy articles usually stay where they are. The employee will use the desk that’s already in the new location. Anyhow, the employee packs everything up, and then movers come and load everything onto dollies. If necessary, it goes by truck to the new building, otherwise, it might just be a dolly ride down the hall. The movers place the unpacked boxes in the new cube or office.
But someone here has said that such a move costs a godawful amount of money. I don’t remember the exact figure, but it was over $1000, per employee moved. What I’m wondering is whether these moves are really that expensive. Is that figure just for the actual cost of hiring the movers, or does it also include the cost of lost productivity on the part of the employees?
Boeing spent 80 million to move their corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago.
Obviously the cost is going to vary with the complexity of the move. Having Joe Blow move his stuff into the empty cubicle next door won’t cost very much at all. Moving the entire company to a new office across town (or across the country) will be much more expensive.
If several people are involved in a relocation shuffle, then you introduce complexity because Joe can’t move his stuff until Mary is out of her office, and she can’t move until Fred vacates.
Some of the costs involved would be
[ul]
[li]Cost of the movers[/li][li]Boxes and moving supplies[/li][li]Employee “downtime”[/li][li]Relocation of computer outlets / phone jacks / etc.[/li][/ul]
If a move to a new building is involved, other costs come in to play
[ul]
[li]Relocating computers/furniture/etc.[/li][li]Constructing/remodeling offices and cubicles[/li][li]Entire company downtime during move[/li][li]Increased rent for new office space[/li][li]Cost of retaining old office space until lease is up (or a buyer is found)[/li][li]Relocation expenses if employees are required to move to a new city[/li][li]Changing of stationery/envelopes/web pages to reflect new address/phone number[/li][/ul]
There are probably a lot of others, but that’s just a few off the top of my head
Obviously, not all of these costs apply to all moves, but it can be an expensive proposition
$1500 per person is a good ballpark estimate for simple moves that don’t involve large-scale relocations.
Our voice services department (Pretentious name for phones!) charges $125 to move a person’s line, whether it’s across the country or to the adjacent cube. The LAN folks charge a similar amount to move printers (they’re on a “vlan” that needs to be programmed with the particular jack number) Happily, end-user computers can just be plugged into anything that’s not a phone or printer jack so there’s no charge for that.
There is also an ungodly amount of planning involved. The move itself may take one day, but there’s typically up to six months of work ahead of time to coordinate moving phone lines, scheduling movers, updating directories, making sure the space is available, and on and on.