Ede’s were recently appointed to complete a relocation of 180 staff for the London School of Economics (LSE). The relocation was to be undertaken from multiple floors in their current office environment to multiple floors within their new office space. Our project management team were tasked at an early stage to develop a move programme that would provide a concise process with minimal disruption to business. We initiated meetings with the stake holders to ascertain the timeline, their expectations for the programme, consulted with the stake holders to establish internal move co-ordinators and gathered information regarding any external contractors both FM & IT.
After the internal departmental move team was established, we briefed them on the role and responsibilities each member of the team had for the successful move of their departments.
We issued reference notes and instructions/reporting procedures which were then passed on to the staff members to action their own responsibilities. We hosted weekly team meetings with the move co-ordinators to brief them on the project progress and to address any issues that may have arisen and monitored any changes that had been requested.
We were tasked with devising a new seating plan for incoming personnel by consulting with the stake holders and completed filing audits to allow the seamless the allocation of the filing into the new storage units and devised a bespoke labelling system. As part of our offering, we worked alongside the inhouse IT team to ensure sure any specialist requirements by the staff were met and ready for day one use.
We were greatly involved with the furniture installation teams to ensure that deadlines for delivery and installation were met on time and made sure that after installation that all desks were correctly powered and had the necessary IT cabling infrastructure provided in order that that the new VOIP system worked as expected.
The relocation was complex in as much as it involved staff being moved from 5 x floors within their current building to 3 x floors within the new building. We arranged access and egress with the building management teams and liaised with onsite security officers to establish full clearance and access to the buildings, providing names and vehicle registrations for our move operations and IT teams. We provided a decommissioning and recommissioning service for the desk top IT through our in-house IT department and undertook a full post-move testing and fault-finding service upon installation.
We also provided a dedicated team of packers to sequentially pack and label the filing in line with the new filing numbering system which was provided from the filing audit allocation. We thereafter completed sequential unpacking. A challenge arose at this stage as the racking installation company had not installed the shelving to the correct pitch, however, our team of fitters reacted immediately to rectify and re pitch the shelving correctly in order to accept the filing. This extra element of work was undertaken after consultation with the LSE’s project manager and allowed for a speedy resolution that mitigated the risk of disrupting the programme.
A carefully planned sequence of events was initiated so that any furniture that was being to be reused was delivered as priority, followed by the decommissioned IT. This allowed the IT to be in place for recommissioning the following day, again providing minimal down time for the LSE. Filing crates followed to allow the filing to be unpacked and made available and finally the personal crates, which were placed adjacent to the new desk locations. When the move was complete, we removed building protection and general packaging and all areas were left tidy. Our move manager carried out a full inspection of both buildings to ensure that all assets scheduled to move had indeed been relocated and undertook a final walk through with both the clients FM & IT teams.
As part of this project, we had allowed for a post move team to be onsite and work along-side the LSE to resolve any issue’s that the staff may have had encountered and commenced the collection and relocation of empty crates to a designated holding area.
A review and lessons learnt meeting was undertaken with the FM team, IT operatives LSE stake holders to confirm that everything had been satisfactorily relocated and to gain feedback for future projects.
Our move team provided the capacity, flexibility and required skill sets to successfully complete the relocation project in accordance with the move timeline as set out in our approved project plan.
