Whether due to an insured loss or financial or operational constraints, moving your company is often complicated. Here is some advice.
The manager of an SME wanting to relocate must make a certain number of fundamental decisions before doing so. The first consideration will be the future location: do you want an old building or a custom location? Do you want complete or partial reorganization of your business? A preliminary schedule will then need to be drawn up and management of the move will need to be assigned to one or more internal project managers.
The project manager’s tasks
The designated manager of the move will then handle:
- drawing up an inventory of the building
- communicating internally and externally about the move
- reorganizing production
- ensuring compliance with the budget
- making sure that deadlines are met for each of the tasks to be completed before D-Day
- making a list of what needs to be moved and what does not, what needs to be purchased and what does not (to reduce costs, we recommend using a removal company with waste collection services or selling the furniture).
- making a list of employees affected internally and/or skills to be sought externally (interior designer, production engineer, legal and administrative assistant, warehouse handler, etc.)
- choosing a removal company (consider prices, time limits, references)
Two vital documents
- The check-list
Any reliable removal company will provide one. Working backwards, this details the steps to be completed before the day of the move. Have you sent your new contact details to your partners? Planned how to move the IT equipment? Made sure that plants will be watered the day before the move? And so on.
- The site plan
Drawn up internally or with the help of consultants, it provides an exact plan of the new production site, office by office or machine by machine. This plan means that everything at the old site is labeled and then rearranged at the new site.
