Office Relocation Timeline: Lease Signing to Move-In

The move date is decided before anyone is on site

Most relocation plans begin with one question: how long will the fit-out take? It is the natural question, because the site work is the visible part. It is also the wrong place to start.

The site work is the middle of an office relocation timeline, not the whole of it. Before it sit the lease terms, the building's rules, the brief, the design and the ordering of items that take weeks to make. After it sit the IT cut-over, commissioning, snagging and the move itself. The date a company can move in is usually decided in the first few weeks after the lease is signed, by how quickly those early decisions are made, not by how fast a contractor builds.

For a CEO or CFO this matters for a simple reason. The cost of a late move is rarely the fit-out. It is two rents running at once, a notice period that has already expired on the old premises, or a team without a workplace.

Where the weeks actually go

Each stage below has its own owner and its own reasons to slip. The durations are not given here because they genuinely depend on the size of the space and the building; what matters is the sequence and what each stage waits for.

None of these stages is unusual. What makes a relocation late is treating them as a single line that starts when the contractor arrives.

The early weeks: due diligence and the lease

The weeks just before and after signing do more to fix the move date than any later stage.

Due diligence on the building. A survey of the actual space, the base-building drawings, the landlord's power and cooling provision and the fit-out guidelines tell you what the design has to work within. The rules a building imposes on ceilings, shafts, working hours and approved vendors are covered in reading the landlord's fit-out guidelines before design. Discovering them after the layout is drawn is one of the commonest causes of a redesign.

The lease terms. The fit-out or rent-free period, the condition the space is handed over in, how the landlord approves tenant works, and what must be reinstated at exit all shape the programme. A space handed over with ceilings, lighting and air conditioning already in place is a different starting point from a bare floor, and it changes how much of the programme sits with the tenant.

What runs in parallel, and what cannot

A relocation is fast when the right things overlap and the wrong things do not.

What can run in parallel:

• Ordering internet circuits and connectivity while the design is still being developed, because service provider lead times are outside anyone's control.
• Furniture selection and sampling alongside design development.
• Landlord review of the design while non-dependent packages are priced.
• Planning the exit from the old premises, including its reinstatement obligations, while the new one is being built.

What must stay in sequence:

• Design freeze before long-lead items are released. Ordering against an unsettled design is how variations begin.
• Services above the ceiling installed and tested before the ceiling closes.
• Network cabling and containment installed before ceilings and partitions close around them.
• Commissioning before the move, not after it. Moving staff into a space whose air conditioning and fire systems have not been tested shifts the problem onto the first working week.

The logic of the site sequence itself, including design freeze and long-lead items, is set out in fit-out programme and phasing.

What a CEO or CFO must decide early

Most delays in a relocation trace back to a decision the business had not yet made. These are the ones that hold everything else:

• Headcount and growth assumption. The number of people the space is planned for, and for how long. Changing it after freeze changes the layout, the services and the furniture order.
• Budget envelope and approval route. Who approves spend, at what level, and how quickly. A design waiting for budget sign-off is a programme on hold.
• Contract structure. Whether design and construction sit with one party or are tendered separately, which changes how much of the design and construction can overlap.
• The overlap with the old premises. How long both leases run together. A short overlap saves rent and removes the safety margin; a long one does the reverse.
• Reuse or replace. Whether existing furniture, IT equipment and AV move across. Reuse saves procurement time only if the items are surveyed early.
• Design authority. One named person who can approve the design and changes to it, with a date by which they will do so.

A wider view of how these decisions fit into the whole project is in the office fit-out guide for India.

The exit is part of the same timeline

Relocations are usually planned as an arrival. They are also a departure, and the old lease carries its own obligations: a notice period, a handback date, and often a duty to reinstate the space to a stated condition. Reinstatement takes time on site and has to be finished before the handback date, which means it starts only once the move is complete.

If the two timelines are planned separately, the overlap is often too short to fit both the move and the reinstatement. What the landlord can typically ask for at exit, and how to limit it, is covered in lease-end reinstatement: what you owe the landlord.

Common mistakes

• Starting the clock at mobilisation. The programme is agreed for the site work only, and the weeks of design, approvals and ordering are not in it.
• Signing the lease before reading the guidelines. The fit-out period is agreed without knowing the building's working hours or approval process.
• Ordering connectivity late. Internet circuits are requested near the end, and the space is ready before the network is.
• Letting the brief move after freeze. A change in headcount or departments arrives once long-lead items are already ordered.
• Treating commissioning as optional time. It is squeezed to protect the move date, and the faults appear in the first month of occupation.
• No overlap with the old premises. A small delay becomes a period without an office.
• Forgetting the exit. Reinstatement of the old space is not planned, and the handback date arrives before it is finished.

What to ask before signing the lease

• What condition will the space be handed over in, and on what date?
• Have we read the full fit-out guidelines and the base-building drawings?
• How does the landlord approve tenant designs, and how long does that review take?
• Is the fit-out or rent-free period long enough for design, approvals, ordering and site work, not just site work?
• What is the notice period on the current premises, and what must be reinstated there?
• Who on our side owns the programme and can approve the design?
• Which items in our likely design are long-lead, and when must they be ordered?

A design-and-build contractor should be able to turn these answers into a programme that starts at lease signing, and show which chain of activities sets the date.

Standards referenced

Fire and life safety provisions in NBC 2016, Part 4, and building services provisions in NBC 2016, Part 8, both relevant where the fit-out alters detection, sprinklers, air conditioning or electrical services; commercial building telecommunications cabling in TIA-568. Whether any statutory approval applies to a particular fit-out, and how long it takes, is determined by the project's consultants and the authority having jurisdiction. Lease terms, notice periods and exit obligations are set by each lease and should be confirmed with the client's legal adviser.