1

We will soon begin construction of a new office building and hope to move in near the end of the year. This is an opportunity that does not come along very often and I would like to ask the community to share their experiences - building a new office what did you miss or what would you do differently. The second phase is what did you miss or would do differently preparing for and executing the move to a new office.

I look forward to learning from the responses.

Thanks,

Mike

6 Spice ups
2

My heartache right now is trying to find voice and data in a very rural area where we are building our new facility. None of the major players in the area know anything about anything available. I was told that Integra Telecom would be able to service the new building until I got a phone call yesterday from someone that was also looking at Integra service just across the street from our new building. They had placed their order for a T1 circuit earlier in the year and it was scheduled to go hot on March 1st. The date came and went and Integra called the company stating they would have to build out the infrastructure at a cost of $260K…I am not getting warm fuzzies about this whole CF.

3

i’m going through this right now. our buildout should be down within the next 4 weeks, and then the move happening immediately after. would love to hear what others have to say also.

4

I find it is possible to follow general best practice and scale it to your needs e.g. even if it is a small building folloow the principles but use a cupboard not an entire room etc.

Dedicate an area for incomming telco services from the street, ducting to external provider pop, ducting to central network room, power, rack, frame (ups, cooling if actrive equipment to be located here). May just be for incomming cables or may host NTEs etc.

Dedicate a central network/server locaiton:
Consider Security, Fire risk, flood risk, power, cooling and cabling access.
Allow for expansion. Multiple power circuits.

Do install structured cabling - don’t go mad, consider your needs e.g. how many ports, but Do put some in every room or area or ensure they can be added later without major construciton.
Do plan for Wifi

Lessons I learnt:
Observe how the business uses IT - for example recently put 2xCat6 drops at everyone’s desk to find that 70% of users used wireless all day and only 50% of desks had phones.

5

We built some offices in the upper half of our warehouse and had to move our entire server room. It gave us a chance to clean up some of the messes of the previous IT staff, but it was definitely a challenge. The biggest advice I can give is take your time to analyze everything and improve what you can while you can, especially if you have the time to do so. Our biggest problem was trying to work with the construction crew to make sure we were operational the entire time but also not get construction dust in our servers (which happened anyway).

So basically, plan as carefully as you can and improve as much as you can while you have the opportunity.

6

How much will you be doing?

Ive recently done a huge one and these are my thoughts:

Do not let if possible non IT people sign off on the IT work and try to save money. Unfortunately I had to stand back and watch weeks of plans go to ruin, because joe blogs didn’t understand the order and instead of putting 60 points in requested 60 doubles, which then made the cabs to small etc. Then Alan Smith goes to try and save a few bucks and you end up with non qualified people slinging cable that does not meet standards and then drops not working.

Keep it simple the less people involved the better, when it started it was me and a few trusted consultants, by the end so many people wanted in for various reasons, there were 5 people all managing different parts and sooooooo many contractors. Again this made things go horribly wrong and fall behind schedule.

Make sure you get top the line cable for your internal runs, as you’ll only get to do it the once, and have a good look at redundancy for switches also a very good time to do it.

Make sure the wireless is spot on and you have all the coverage you need, also use it as a time to review your BYOD policies etc, its a great time add a few more ssids and vlans and crack down a bit. People are far more happy to accept change in a new building so give yourself time to think of as many policies ect that would normally upset your users and put them into place now. You’ve a golden ticket for unpopular decisions with the staff so use it.

If its old don’t take it with you, this makes sense with computers why move a 5 year old desktopknows a good time for a refresh. But what amazed me was how this applied to everything, the staff went ape over not having new desks, new cables, new shelves etc not really IT issue but I was surprised over how much hate went down over it.

Unless you have full authority make sure you have everything in writing, take minutes at meetings I cant stress that enough, if its a

big move something will go wrong and the blame game will get played so cover yourself if you’re working with others.

Get some fancy reports put together as well, if you have a board or anything above you they will most likely assume that as its new it will be faster, it might not be the case but pie charts go down a treat in these situations.

Get bigger racks, would be another tip you never know what last minute things will take place, measure what you need then double it. I wish I did Oh how I wish.

Surge protect the daylights out of the place, if you can have them everywhere. It might seem excessive but when your plugging in new machines and there going up in smoke, and the sparky just shrugs and says a few initial surges are to be expected a few protected strips will seem like a bargain.

I know Im not talking much about parts, but imagine you know what you need, for me I had the plans sorted in weeks its childs play its the politics that knocked me for six. They say that moving is the one of the most stressful times, this applies 10 fold to workers.

7

The second phase is what did you miss or would do differently preparing for and executing the move to a new office.

I look forward to learning from the responses.

Hi Mike,

First Of all you should start your implementation layer by layer starting from layer 1 to layer 8.

you should start by the wiring process and upgrading your cables for the new version eg: Cat 6 , Cat 6a it depends on your future planning and don’t forget to test all your cables during the installation process.

then relocate all of your patch panels switches servers cabinets to the new server room after you have done the wiring part and patched your network cables from patch panel to wall jacks.

after this you should ensure you have a cooling system for you server room (temperature and humidity)

install your user workstations, connect all of your server room resources (servers, routers, Storages, etc…)

finally turn on all of your server room resources starting by the switches, routers, servers, then workstations.

good luck. and have a safe relocation.

8

hi Mike

First, you must be totally included in all construction project to check construction plan and don’t have any suprise when all project is almost finished. This is the most important part of this migration. Remember, probably you don’t have another oportunity to change and request LAN or electric ducts when the construction finished.

I think you need check very quick this things

  1. Switches: PoE recommended and considerer you capability of growth. Consider 10 or 15% to be prepared for any changes in your business.

  2. Cables and new distribution. In this case, check our capability of add more workstations in your network without problems. Consider in your budget and design solution 10% more wokrstations for the future. It’s better for us be prepared to new and fast workstations requested for your business

  3. Wireless devices. I recommended Cisco Aironet 1420AP or similar for medium business. If you need to check all incidents in your mobile, i think Meraki Indoor / Outdoor is the best opcion.

Regards

Jorge F.

9

Leif2551 said it. The politics of the situation can cause major problems down the line. If you are not in full control of all the purse strings, watch out for the contractors who are friends or relatives or have some other back doors to those above you. You need to have the authority to bring them into line.

And don’t be surprised if you have anything to do with the actual construction and a government inspector hints that he needs to be bribed. Sorry, but that’s life.

Been there.

10

Thanks Everyone,

I really appreciate the responses. There are definitely many layers involved at not just the technical level but as pointed out the political level also.

Mike