What office removals cost in London, and what the number is built from

The short version

Why nobody can quote an office cost per desk

Homes are similar enough to band, because a two-bedroom flat holds roughly what another two-bedroom flat holds. Offices are not comparable in that way: two thirty-desk businesses can differ by a full day of labour without differing by a single desk.

One occupies a single floor with a dock and a goods lift. The other is three storeys of a Georgian townhouse with a domestic staircase, a plan chest and a sample library of stone and tile. A published per-desk rate prices the first building and loses money on the second, so it is only ever an average of somebody else's premises.

The buildings at either end do most of the pricing

This is the part that gets underestimated, and it is what our office removals service is planned around. The survey exists to collect these answers before a number is given.

• The goods lift, and whoever holds the booking sheet. In a managed building it is the most contested resource there is, allocated to whichever occupier asked first. The booking belongs to the tenant or the managing agent rather than to us. Measure the car rather than the doorway, because the car is what the longest desk has to fit inside. Anything that will not enter the lift travels down the staircase instead, which means more crew and more hours.
• A loading dock, or simply a street door. A bay you can reverse into is one job. A street door squeezed between two shop fronts, with a long carry to wherever a vehicle may legally stand, is another entirely. The internal carry from the lift lobby to your suite door is frequently longer than the carry from the vehicle.
• A height limit on the approach to an underground service yard. The limit determines the vehicle, and the vehicle determines the number of journeys. A smaller van that clears the barrier makes several trips where one large vehicle would have made a single run. We read the sign at the survey, as we do on the West London business parks, and we bring something we know clears the ramp.
• An estate or a managing agent operating its own rules. On a business park the permission belongs to the estate rather than to your own four walls. It generally arrives with conditions: crew names, the van's number plate, photographic identification at a gatehouse and a sign-in procedure. Request all of it the day you agree a date, because it is reliably the slowest item in the job.
• Protection of the common parts. Lift walls, floor coverings and door frames at both addresses, installed before the first crate moves and lifted again before Monday. Somebody from the building usually signs the route off afterwards. That is labour and materials, and it belongs in a quotation rather than in a conversation later.

Managed buildings commonly want documentation from the contractor carrying out the move before they will release a lift. Ask yours exactly what it requires, send us the list, and we will answer it in writing at the survey.

The access window changes the plan, not merely the price

Most offices relocate outside working hours, precisely so the business does not surrender a trading day. That is the right decision, and it is also a materially different operation from a Tuesday morning.

Out of hours, somebody from security has to admit the crew. A named contact has to be reachable at 9pm, the lift keys have to be arranged in advance, and the floor protection goes down before the first crate moves. Nobody else is in the building to resolve a locked door at midnight.

The harder situation is two buildings that will not permit the same window. The load then cannot come out and go straight back in. It runs as part-loads instead, or it remains with us between the two halves of the job. You get that sequence in writing before the date is fixed. That is considerably better than a crew standing at a locked entrance on a Saturday night.

Crates, and the count the day is built on

An office move is crated and labelled against a numbered floor plan. Every crate, screen and pedestal carries the number of the desk position it belongs to. The crew deliver it there rather than to a pile beside the lift.

Crate hire, delivery and collection are genuine line items. The empty crates arrive in time for the packing and they are collected again after the unpack. The count agreed at the survey is what the crew size, the vehicle and the hours are calculated from. A crate nobody counted has nowhere to stand. That matters most in buildings where the corridor is a means of escape and has to stay clear, as it does across Central London.

Two categories are habitually undercounted. Paper is the first: deed boxes, year-end files, patient records and archived drawings weigh considerably more than the desks do. Storage is the second: the stationery cupboard, the marketing boxes and the equipment nobody has opened since the fit-out are what fill the vehicle.

IT is two jobs, and they have to be sequenced

Screens, docking stations, printers and server racks travel wrapped and crated. They go back onto the correct desk at the other end. Decommissioning the network and recommissioning it afterwards is your IT provider's work rather than ours. We are explicit about that boundary at the survey rather than after it.

Both halves then have to be sequenced, so send us your IT provider's schedule. Say the rack has to be powered down from 6pm and live again by Sunday afternoon. That determines what we move first and what we move last, and the ordering either costs or saves several hours. Equipment installed into the room, such as a large-format plotter or a bench saw, usually needs the supplier's engineer first.

The furniture, and whatever is not travelling with you

Desks are dismantled and reassembled, and pedestals, lockers and storage walls travel separately from the tops they sit under. A meeting table that arrived before the staircase was altered leaves the building in pieces. All of that is time, and a survey counts it instead of estimating it.

Decide early what is not coming with you, because anything left behind is not part of the removal. Disposal is a separate arrangement, agreed at the survey and quoted on its own. Tell us what is staying at the enquiry rather than on the morning.

Dilapidations are part of the cost of leaving

An office move normally concludes in a schedule-of-condition inspection rather than a key handover. The lease describes the condition the space must be returned in. The dilapidations claim is then settled against that description rather than against what feels reasonable.

The forgotten items are consistent: partitions, cable trays, floor boxes, screen fixings and the redundant server rack. Read the schedule early enough that you can still do something about it. Budget for emptying the old suite as well as for filling the new one. Our office move planning guide sets out when each of those jobs has to begin.

What to have ready before you ask for a quote

Supply these and a quotation can be accurate; omit them and whatever figure arrives is an average of somebody else's building.

• A floor plan of the new premises with the desk positions numbered.
• A desk count, plus pedestals, cupboards, storage, archive and anything oversized.
• The goods lift arrangement at either end: who books it, the car dimensions and the length of the slot.
• The loading arrangement at either end: dock, bay or street, and any height restriction on the ramp.
• The access window each building permits, and the out-of-hours contact for the night itself.
• Whatever each building requires from the contractor carrying out the move, in its own words.
• Your IT provider's schedule for the shutdown and the restart.
• A list of everything being left behind.

How we assemble the number

We survey every job before quoting, in person or by video call. A commercial move priced from a description is priced from a guess, and nobody can inspect a lift car over the telephone.

The quotation then arrives in writing, naming the crew, the vehicle, the access window it assumes and what sits outside it. The number you accept is the number you pay. We are fully insured. Public charges are a separate matter: parking suspensions are set by the borough and the vehicle charges by TfL, so they are itemised at cost. Where a bay has to be held, the borough-by-borough rules are in our parking suspensions guide.

Common questions