Sixty days is enough for a Bay Area office move if the freight elevator is booked before the crew is. Weeks one and two are inventory, restoration clause review, and both buildings' certificate of insurance requirements. Weeks three to six are disposition, procurement, and install scheduling. The last two weeks are the move itself and the punch list. The two docks, origin and destination, are the constraint everything else schedules around.
Most office move plans start with an inventory and a truck quote. Both are useful and neither is the constraint. The constraint is that you have two loading docks, one at the building you are leaving and one at the building you are entering, and they were booked by different property managers who have never spoken.
Everything else on the plan is downstream of that. Here is the sequence that works in the Bay Area, on a 60 day clock, which is the timeline most companies actually have rather than the one the guides assume.
Week 1 and 2: find out what the buildings will allow
Before anyone counts a chair, get the two access windows in writing. In a San Francisco Class A tower that means a freight elevator reservation, a certificate of insurance naming the right entities with the right limits, floor and elevator protection, and often an after-hours requirement that turns a day crew into a night crew. In an Oakland brick-and-timber conversion it means a street loading permit and a real conversation about whether a 96-inch worksurface makes the turn at the landing.
- Origin building Freight window, COI requirements, after-hours rules, protection standard, and whether the restoration clause obliges you to leave the space in a specific condition.
- Destination building Same list again, plus whether the space will actually be finished on the date construction says it will be.
- The gap between them If the origin window is a Saturday and the destination window is a Tuesday, you have just discovered that you need staging. Better now than in week seven.
Week 2 and 3: decide what is actually moving
Moving furniture costs roughly what the furniture is worth on a lot of B-grade inventory. That is the uncomfortable fact that most move plans avoid. Disassembly, transport, and reinstall on a mid-range workstation can approach the second life replacement cost of the same workstation, and you arrive with a piece that is two years older.
So the inventory is not a list. It is three lists.
- Moves Anything premium, anything in good condition, anything the new plan actually has a place for. Task seating almost always moves. Good height-adjustable bases almost always move.
- Sells Surplus from a downsize, anything that does not fit the new layout, anything the team already complains about. Selling it turns a disposal cost into a credit against the move.
- Goes Broken, obsolete, or so cheap that touching it twice costs more than replacing it. Route it to donation or recycling on day one rather than letting it occupy dock space for a month.
Do this against the new floor plan, not the old one. The question is never "do we own this", it is "does the new layout have a place for it".
Week 4 and 5: the gap-fill and the paperwork
Now you know what is moving, you know what is missing. This is where second life earns its place: the pieces you need already exist and can be sourced in weeks, where new furniture would quote a lead time longer than your entire remaining schedule.
| Item | New furniture lead time | Second life |
|---|---|---|
| Task seating, 60 units | 8-14 weeks | Days to 2 weeks |
| Height-adjustable benching, 40 stations | 10-16 weeks | 2-4 weeks |
| Conference tables | 12-20 weeks | 1-3 weeks, subject to what is in stock |
| Storage and files | 8-12 weeks | Days |
The other half of these two weeks is unglamorous and it is what actually derails moves: COIs issued, permits pulled, IT and AV scheduled, building contacts confirmed by name, and a decision about who is packing personal effects. That last one is cheaper if your team does it, and it needs to be said out loud in week four rather than discovered on Friday afternoon.
Week 6 and 7: sell down and pre-stage
Furniture leaving through resale should leave before move week, not during it. Buyers pay more for pieces they can see standing in a space than for the same pieces stacked on a pallet, and every zone a buyer empties is a zone your crew does not have to work around.
Whatever is moving but cannot go straight into the new space gets staged and manifested. Not thrown in a self-storage unit, which costs two extra handling legs and produces no inventory record.
Week 8: move
- Sequence by destination zone Load the truck in the order the new floor gets built out, so nothing is moved twice inside the space.
- Reinstall before IT Desks and power first, then the network, then people. Reversing that order is the single most common cause of a Monday that does not work.
- Walk the origin space with the manifest Anything left behind is either an oversight or something you owe the landlord a decision about. Find out with the crew still on site.
- Close the documentation Diversion weights, donation receipts, resale credit, and the RESEAT ID records for what moved. Collect it during the job or you will not collect it at all.
Moving in the next quarter? Start with the brief, or read the 90 day decommissioning checklist if you are also clearing a space on the way out.