Moving an Office, Clinic or Shop: A Planning Guide for Marin Businesses

When a household moves, a bad week is an inconvenience. When a business moves, a bad week is lost revenue, missed appointments, and customers who wonder whether you are still open. That changes how the work should be planned. The goal of a commercial move is not only to get everything to the new address. It is to get you working again as quickly as possible.

Earl Farnsworth Express has been moving Marin County families and businesses from San Rafael since 1971. Our commercial work covers offices, medical facilities and retail stores, and the planning steps below apply to almost any of them.

Start with the walk-through

For office moves, our crew leader walks through your building with you to survey the work. That conversation is the foundation of the plan. The crew leader also consults with your relocation coordinator or site team so that we understand what you expect before the first box is touched. If your company has someone in that role, bring them in early. If it does not, choose one person to speak for the move.

Use the walk-through to point out the difficult things: the server closet, the heavy safe, the conference table that was built in the room, the elevator that is shared with other tenants. Whatever you mention at this stage is planned for. Whatever you save for moving day becomes a delay.

Appoint one decision-maker and build a floor plan

The most common source of confusion on a commercial move is two people giving the crew two different answers. Name a single point of contact who can say where the desk goes. Then give that person a floor plan of the new space with each room, workstation or department marked and numbered. Matching numbered labels on furniture and cartons let a crew place things without asking questions, and it keeps the first morning in the new space from becoming a scavenger hunt.

• Number every workstation and room on the new floor plan, and put the matching label on each desk, chair and carton.
• Ask each employee to pack their personal items and desk contents in labeled cartons ahead of time.
• Decide what will be discarded or shredded before moving day, rather than moving it.
• Photograph how the network, phones and equipment are connected so technicians can reconnect them quickly.
• Set aside anything confidential or irreplaceable to travel with you.

Medical facilities

Our team has experience moving all types of hospital and clinic equipment, from large imaging machines to delicate surgical tools. We work with you on a plan that fits your budget and timeline, aiming for your equipment to arrive on time and in good condition.

Several planning steps belong to you and your vendors. Ask your equipment manufacturers or service companies whether a machine needs to be prepared, disconnected or recalibrated before and after it moves, and schedule those visits around the move date. Plan how patient records will be handled and who is responsible for them during the transition, and check with your compliance or records contact about anything specific to your practice. Think through patient scheduling too, so appointments are not booked into a space that is still being set up.

Retail relocations

For a shop, the work runs from packing and loading, through transportation, to installation. Fixtures, shelving, display cases and inventory all have to arrive in an order that lets you rebuild the store logically.

• Photograph every display and shelf set before it comes down, so it can be rebuilt the same way.
• Number fixtures and shelving, and record the numbers on the new store layout.
• Pack stock by department and label by shelf location in the new store.
• Decide whether to sell down inventory first, so there is less to move.
• Plan a phased opening, with the cash register and the best-selling areas set up first.

Timing, access and storage

Many businesses prefer to move on a weekend or after hours, so that the closure falls on days with the least traffic. Tell us what hours you can use. Ask your building manager about loading dock times, elevator reservations and any paperwork a building requires, since those rules vary from property to property and you will want them settled before moving day, not during it.

If the new space is not quite ready, or you need to hold overflow furniture, files or stock, our San Rafael facility offers storage. It is a 40,000-square-foot building with 12,000 square feet of clean, containerized space and a climate-controlled vault, and the same crew that loads your goods can move them in and back out.

Tell people before it happens

A week or two before the move, tell customers, clients and patients the new address, the closure dates and the reopening date. Update your website, your Google listing and your voicemail greeting, and change your mailing address with the Postal Service. These small steps keep the people who depend on you from showing up at an empty door.

If your business is planning a move in or out of Marin, call Earl Farnsworth Express at (415) 459-6683. We will arrange a walk-through, learn what has to be up and running first, and build the plan around that.