The office relocation checklist for Pakistani businesses

An office move is not a house move. The trucks look the same. The labelling looks the same. The packing material is the same. But the thing you cannot afford to break is invisible: a Monday morning when 20 people walk into the new office and can't do their job.

We've run a lot of these. Some go smoothly. Some don't. The difference is almost never the move itself. It's the six weeks before the move. Here is what that looks like for a typical small to mid-size Pakistani office of 15 to 60 people.

6 to 8 weeks out: the long-lead items

Three things in this window have lead times you cannot shorten, and forgetting them is the most common reason office moves go sideways.

• ISP installation at the new office.Whether it's PTCL, Nayatel, Stormfiber, or a corporate fibre line, the install lead time is 2 to 4 weeks even when everything goes smoothly. Order it the day you sign the new lease.
• Lease termination notice for the old office.Most commercial leases need 30 to 90 days written notice. Re-read your contract before you do anything else.
• Floor plan and seating chart for the new place.Print it, share it with the team, and put a name in every chair before move day. The single biggest waste of time on an office move is people standing around on Monday wondering where they sit.

3 to 4 weeks out: paperwork and notifications

This is the unglamorous part. Most of it is half-hour tasks nobody wants to do. They have to happen anyway.

• SECP address change.File the change of registered office through the e-services portal. Don't forget the resolution from the board.
• FBR / NTN address update. Update through IRIS. If your tax notices go to the old address you will not see them.
• Bank address change.Both the company operating account and any signatory's personal accounts if they're registered to the office.
• Google Business Profile.Crucial for SEO. If you're a B2B you might not care, but if any walk-ins matter at all, do it.
• Vendor notifications. Suppliers, insurance provider, payroll service, accountant, legal counsel, and anyone who courier-delivers anything to your office.
• Utilities.Old electricity, gas, water, telephone bills get the disconnection request. New ones get the connection request. If the old one isn't in your name, hand the meter readings to the landlord on the day.
• Internal comms. One company-wide email, followed by a town hall or a Slack message thread, with the new address, the move date, what each person needs to do before move day, and who their seat will be next to. Repeat a week before. Repeat the day before.

1 to 2 weeks out: physical preparation

Now the office itself starts to change.

• Workstation labelling.Every desk, chair, monitor, dock, and personal storage unit gets a sticker with the owner's name and the destination seat number. We colour-code by department so the unloading crew can split the office into sections at the new place.
• Server room plan.Document everything before touching anything. Photo the back of every rack. Photo the patch panel. Note the colour code of every cable. Identify who's reseating the servers at the new place (your IT team, the mover, or the ISP installer). Don't assume the mover will know.
• Personal items briefing.Everyone packs their own desk drawer. Photos, mugs, snacks, certificates. The mover doesn't pack personal items unless explicitly told to. People are particular about what touches their stuff.
• Identify a captain on your side. One person who has full authority to make decisions on the day. They stay at the old office until the truck leaves, then meet the truck at the new office. Not the CEO. Not the receptionist. Someone who knows the office and can answer questions quickly.

The week of: dry run and backup

• Server and file backup.Cloud backup of every critical system the day before move. Yes, even if you have redundancy. The day a truck is bouncing along Ferozepur Road is not the day to discover your backup hasn't run for three months.
• Critical-paths conversation with the mover.What time can the truck enter the new building? Is there a service lift? What floor is the office on? Is there a window of time in the day when commercial vehicles aren't allowed in? Most office buildings have rules. Find them out before move day.
• Customer / client comms. If you have clients who visit, email them the new address one week out and again two days before. Update your email signature block. Update your invoicing footer.
• Confirm the move slot in writing. Most office moves are Friday-evening to Sunday-night, so the team can start fresh Monday. Confirm the load-out time and the load-in time at both buildings.

Move weekend, hour by hour

A typical Friday-to-Sunday office move runs like this.

Friday, 5 PM. Last person leaves the office. Lights stay on so the move crew can work.

Friday, 6 PM. Crew arrives. Captain walks the office. Every workstation, every meeting room, every storage cabinet. Inventory list gets ticked off as we go.

Friday, 7 PM to midnight. Packing. The big items first: filing cabinets, server rack (carefully), bigger printers, conference room furniture. Workstations get disassembled in standard order: monitor first, dock next, keyboard and mouse into a labelled bag, the desktop tower last. Everything gets the owner sticker.

Saturday, 7 AM to 2 PM. Loading. Teams of three or four work the floors in parallel. Heavy items first into the truck, server rack last (rides upright, strapped, dedicated crew member).

Saturday, 2 PM to 4 PM. Drive and unload at the new office. Reverse order: server rack first, big furniture next, workstations last.

Saturday afternoon and evening. Workstation reassembly. Each one back to the seating chart. Power tested, networking cables run. By 8 PM Saturday, every desk should be physically usable.

Sunday morning. IT rebuilds the network. Servers come up. Switches and wifi go live. Printers join. VOIP gets tested. By Sunday afternoon, your captain walks the office one last time and confirms every seat works.

Monday morning

Three things that always help on Monday.

1. Captain on site by 7 AM.Before anyone else. Lights on, AC on, a few teas on the way for the early arrivals. The first person who walks in shouldn't be the one trying to find the breaker box.
2. Welcome email at 8 AM.Where the bathrooms are. Where the kitchen is. Wifi password. Who to call if something at their seat doesn't work. Where the printer lives.
3. An IT-on-call rota for the day. One person dedicated to fixing whatever broke over the weekend. There will be something.

Common screw-ups

• Server room not photographed before disassembly. Two days later you can't remember what plugged into what.
• Bank notification missed. Cheques start bouncing because they go to an address you no longer occupy.
• New office key handed over but the AC service contract wasn't transferred. The AC is dead the first week of June.
• Monitor cables packed separately from monitors. Hours lost on Sunday afternoon trying to match cables to seats.
• Nobody briefed the new building's security on the weekend access. Truck waits at the gate for an hour while someone calls the building manager.

We've made every one of these mistakes in our first few years. Now they're on a printed pre-move checklist we hand to the customer captain at the planning meeting. If you book us, you get the checklist whether you like it or not.

For an office move, the survey takes 30 to 45 minutes and we recommend doing it 6 to 8 weeks out. The quote is line-itemed by department, by floor, and by access. Send us a message and we'll set one up.