bcom ICT plans and delivers office IT relocations for Gold Coast businesses — moving servers, networks, structured cabling, phone systems and workstations, then testing everything before staff arrive. Cutovers are typically staged across a weekend to avoid losing a trading day. Call 07 3041 8993.
It's almost never the moving day
Office IT moves fail on lead times and assumptions, not on the physical work.
Carrier lead times
NBN, fibre and phone line provisioning at a new site can take weeks, and nobody tells you that until you ask. This is the single most common reason a move slips — it needs starting long before the boxes are packed.
Nobody surveyed the new site
No comms room, no power where the rack needs to go, not enough data points, or cabling that terminates somewhere unhelpful. Cheap to find early, expensive to discover on moving day.
Number porting left too late
Porting business phone numbers takes time and cannot be rushed on the day. Started late, you open at the new address with no phones.
Nobody tested before Monday
Equipment that was working before the move is assumed to work after it. Printers, scanners, EFTPOS and shared drives are where that assumption usually breaks.
Four stages, starting well before the move
1. Survey both sites
What you have, what the new site can take, where the comms room goes, how many data points are needed and what has to be cabled.
2. Order early
Carrier services, number porting and any cabling booked against the move date with the lead times built in, not discovered.
3. Stage the cutover
Usually across a weekend. Non-critical equipment moves first; servers and phones cut over last, in a planned order.
4. Test before handover
Every workstation, printer, phone, EFTPOS terminal and shared drive checked working before anyone arrives Monday.
What's in scope
- Server and network equipment decommissioned, moved and recommissioned
- Structured cabling at the new site — installed by ACMA registered cabling contractors we engage and manage
- Phone system relocation and number porting, including legacy PBX where you're keeping it
- Internet and carrier services ordered, provisioned and tested against the move date
- Workstations, printers, scanners and EFTPOS moved, reconnected and verified
- Updated documentation and asset register handed to you at the end
The relocation problems we are actually called to
Six situations. Five of them are decided weeks before the move, and one of them cannot be fixed on the weekend.
“We move in three weeks and haven’t ordered the internet”
Usually lead times nobody checked. A new service at a new address can take considerably longer than a fit-out, and it is the item most often discovered late.
What we do Order services the moment the lease is signed. This is the constraint on almost every office move, and it is the one thing that cannot be solved by working a weekend.
“The new building says it’s already cabled”
Usually cabling of unknown age, standard and condition, frequently modified by previous tenants and documented by nobody.
What we do Test and certify it before relying on it. Discovering that nine outlets fail on the Monday morning is a very different situation from discovering it three weeks out.
“Nobody knows what’s in the comms room”
Usually equipment accumulated over a tenancy, some of it live, some of it abandoned by previous occupants, none of it labelled.
What we do Document what exists and what it does before anything is unplugged. The move is when undocumented dependencies surface, and the middle of a move is the worst moment to find them.
“We’ll just move the phones ourselves”
Usually an underestimate. Numbers, services and cabling all have to align at the new site, and phones are typically left until last.
What we do Treat phones as a lead item rather than a moving-day task. It is the part of a relocation with the least tolerance for running late and the most external dependencies.
“Can the server just go in the boot?”
Usually an understandable question and a genuine risk. Servers are heavy, delicate, and hold everything the business runs on.
What we do Move it deliberately, with a verified backup taken first and a tested way back. The backup before a move is not a formality — it is the only thing standing between a bad journey and a lost business.
“Staff arrive Monday and nothing works”
Usually a cutover completed but never tested, or tested only by the people who did it.
What we do Test as a user before anyone arrives — log in, print, call out, open a file, reach the internet. The gap between it is connected and it works is where lost trading days live.
What a planned relocation looks like
Representative engagements, drawn from real work with identifying detail removed — we don’t name clients without written permission.
Testing the new building three weeks out instead of on the Monday
The situation
A firm was relocating over a single weekend to a floor the landlord described as cabled and ready. Forty positions, and staff expected to be working on Monday morning.
What we found
Certification three weeks before the move found a mix of cable standards with no records distinguishing them and nine runs that failed outright, two of them serving the room intended for the comms cabinet. The internet service, ordered a fortnight earlier, had a connection date four days after the move. Both problems were entirely solvable with three weeks in hand and neither was solvable on a Sunday night.
What we did
Replaced the nine failed runs, escalated the service order with the provider and arranged a temporary mobile broadband service as cover, then configured and tested everything before the move weekend.
The outcome
The firm moved on Saturday and worked on Monday. The permanent service connected on the Thursday as revised, by which point nobody had noticed, because the cover had been arranged rather than improvised.
The dependency that surfaced when a cable was unplugged
The situation
A business was moving premises and had documented what it believed was in the comms room — the server, the switching, the router and the phone system.
What we found
Tracing everything before disconnection found a small unlabelled device that turned out to be a monitored alarm dialler, and a second connection feeding a card reader on the front door of a part of the building the business shared with another tenant. Neither appeared in any documentation and neither belonged to anything anyone had thought about. Unplugging the rack without tracing it first would have disabled a monitored alarm and locked a shared entrance.
What we did
Identified every connection and what it served before anything was touched, arranged the alarm and door access separately with their own providers, and moved the rest as planned.
The outcome
Nothing was discovered by failing. The tracing added half a day to the preparation and removed two problems that would have appeared on a Sunday evening with nobody available to resolve them.
Testing as a user rather than as an installer
The situation
A business completed a weekend relocation. Everything had been connected, powered and confirmed working by the team doing the move before they left on Sunday evening.
What we found
Staff arrived Monday and could not print, and half of them could not reach a shared drive. Nothing had been done incorrectly. The testing had confirmed that each device was connected and responding, which was true, and had not confirmed that an ordinary person sitting at an ordinary desk could log in, open a file, print it and make a call. The printers were reachable and the print queues on the workstations still pointed at addresses from the old premises. The shared drive was online and the mapping used a server name resolved by a system that had not yet been repointed.
What we did
Worked through the office desk by desk on the Monday morning to restore normal working, then rebuilt the checklist so a relocation ends with somebody sitting at a real desk performing the five things staff do first, rather than with a list of devices confirmed as responding.
The outcome
The business lost most of a morning rather than a day. Every subsequent move we have run finishes with that user-level test, because the gap between it is connected and it works is precisely where a lost trading day lives.
Questions Gold Coast businesses ask us
How far ahead should we plan an office IT move?
Start at least six to eight weeks out, and earlier if the new site needs carrier services provisioned. NBN, fibre and phone line lead times are the most common reason an office move slips — the physical work is the easy part. bcom ICT surveys both sites and orders carrier services against your move date rather than after it.
Will we lose phone numbers?
No. Number porting is planned and started well ahead of the move rather than attempted on the day. That includes legacy PBX systems where you're relocating rather than replacing.
Can you do it over a weekend?
That's the usual approach. Non-critical equipment moves first, servers and phones cut over last, and everything is tested before staff arrive Monday. Larger estates sometimes need a staged move across two weekends.
Do you handle the cabling at the new site?
Yes, as part of the job. Fixed cabling legally requires a registered cabler in Australia, so that portion is carried out by ACMA registered cabling contractors we engage and manage — you deal with one point of contact and get testing documentation on completion.
What if the new site isn't ready?
We'll tell you during the survey rather than on moving day. Missing power, no viable comms room location or insufficient data points are all cheap to solve six weeks out and very expensive to solve on a Saturday.
Related services
Got a move date?
Tell us when and where. The earlier we survey, the fewer surprises there are — and carrier lead times wait for nobody.