Office Moving in Geneva

Why count workstations rather than floor area?

This is the technical point that separates a serious office quote from a per-square-metre estimate, and it is worth explaining because it lets you compare quotes properly.

Floor area says nothing about the volume to be moved. A 300 m² floor laid out as dense open plan holds forty workstations, forty screens, forty pedestals, shared cabinets and a team kitchen. The same floor in individual offices holds twelve workstations, twelve cupboards and a lot of empty space. The first is close to three times the work of the second.

The workstation, by contrast, is a stable unit. One workstation averages a desk, a pedestal, a chair, one or two screens, a tower or dock, a phone and the occupant's personal effects. That regularity is why we count CHF 55 per workstation: the total follows the real work.

What remains are the items that cannot be counted per workstation and which we survey separately: meeting rooms and their tables, kitchen and cafeteria, stationery store, archive room, server or network rack, reception furniture. On offices, these are the areas that create the gaps between quotes — and a quote that does not mention them will be revised.

Weekend, evening or weekday: what each option really costs

The real cost of an office move is not on our invoice: it is the time your teams are not working. That is the angle from which to choose the slot.

A weekday move in office hours is the cheapest for us — CHF 1'600 against CHF 2'000 at the weekend on fifteen workstations — because it does not mobilise a team on premium hours. It suits organisations that can work from home for a day or whose activity does not depend on being in the office. If that is you, take this option: the gap between the two amounts is real.

The evening slot, at CHF 1'850, suits phased moves: one floor emptied at a time, after staff leave, over several evenings. It is the gentlest formula for operations but it demands rigorous labelling, otherwise you spend two days looking for a box.

The weekend, at CHF 2'000, remains the majority choice for a simple reason: you shut down on Friday evening and switch on again Monday morning, and nobody works in a building site. It is what we recommend as soon as there are more than ten workstations or a server to move, because it leaves margin for the unexpected — and on an office move the unexpected almost always concerns the network.

IT: what we do and what stays with you

The IT option takes our example to CHF 2'600. It covers disconnection, protected transport and reinstallation of workstations. We are explicit about its scope because this is where misunderstandings cost the most.

What we do: disconnect and label each workstation, photograph the connections before disconnecting, protect screens individually, transport towers away from impact, then reinstall each workstation at its new position according to the floor plan — screen, dock, keyboard, phone — and check that it powers up. For a rack or server we transport the equipment with appropriate care and coordinate with your IT provider.

What stays on your side, and this matters: backing up your data before the move, network configuration, static IP addresses, licences, printer settings and bringing servers back into service. We move equipment; we do not administer your systems. A removal is never the right moment to discover that a backup was out of date.

Our standing recommendation: have your IT provider on site the same day, late afternoon, once the equipment is reinstalled. Many companies book them for Monday morning, which guarantees a lost morning if any detail does not work. Two hours at the right moment beats a day of emergency work.

Archives and confidential documents

Moving archives under seal takes our example to CHF 2'500. In Geneva, with its density of practices, law firms, fiduciaries, international organisations and financial companies, this is a routine request rather than a refinement.

The principle is chain of custody. Files go into sealed crates or boxes, each container is numbered, an inventory is drawn up and signed at departure, and the same inventory is countersigned on arrival. Seals are not opened during transport. That makes it possible to demonstrate, if the question ever arises, that nobody had access to the contents between the two addresses.

There is a practical rule we always apply: archives do not travel in the same load as furniture where their volume allows, and they are never left unattended on a pavement or in a lobby. It sounds obvious, yet that is exactly where incidents happen — not during transport, but during waiting time.

On sorting, our position is cautious. We transport; we do not decide what should be kept or destroyed: retention periods depend on your activity and your obligations, and we do not interpret them on your behalf. If you do decide on destruction, however, we can arrange removal to a document destruction facility, with a certificate.

Furniture you are not taking: dispose rather than move

The disposal option takes our example to CHF 2'800. It is often the most profitable line in the quote, and here is the reasoning we go through with clients.

Moving a piece of furniture costs money once, then occupies space and value in the new premises. On an office move there is almost always between 10 and 25% of the furniture that should not make the journey: mismatched chairs, metal cabinets from an earlier fit-out, desks that no longer suit the new layout, obsolete screens, boxes of expired archives, over-ordered stationery.

The right method is to sort before, not after. During the visit we draw up a 'goes / stays / dispose' list with you, workstation by workstation and zone by zone. Anything marked for disposal never goes into the lorry, which reduces the volume moved and therefore the cost of the removal itself.

One point that matters to many companies: office furniture in good condition has value. We can direct what is reusable towards a reuse channel rather than to the tip, which is both environmentally and sometimes financially worthwhile. Electronic equipment follows a separate and mandatory recycling channel, which we handle.

The floor plan: the document that decides everything

It is the only document that truly counts on the day, and it is the one companies prepare least. Without a floor plan, a removal team puts boxes in the middle of the room and waits for instructions — and you lose half a day.

A useful plan is simple: one diagram per floor, with a number for each workstation and the position of each shared item. Every workstation in the old premises gets a label with its destination number, and every position in the new premises gets the same label on the floor or wall. A box labelled 4-12 goes to position 4-12, with no question to ask.

Two classic mistakes. The first is labelling by staff name: allocations change between preparation and the move, and a label reading 'Ms X's desk' becomes useless if Ms X has changed team. Number the positions, not the people. The second is forgetting shared areas: the kitchen, the shared printer, the store, the cleaning cupboard. Those are the ones that stay in boxes for three weeks.

We prepare this plan with you during the visit when you do not have one, and we supply the labels. It is not billed separately: it is what makes the rest of the work possible.

Cleaning and handing back the old premises

A commercial lease ends with a handover, and the requirements are generally stricter than for a home: leases often provide for reinstatement, sometimes for removing the fit-out you installed.

Three items come up systematically in the reservations. Floor marks: carpet dented by chair castors, tiles lifted under a server, parquet scratched by a pedestal. Walls: plugs, screen brackets, stapled cabling, paint marked behind desks. And added fit-out: light partitions, kitchenette, exposed data cabling, signage — which the lease may require you to remove.

Our recommendation is to read that clause of the lease before planning, not after. The difference between 'return clean' and 'return to original condition' can amount to several thousand francs of work, and that information is in your contract. We quote cleaning of the empty premises; reinstatement work — painting, filling — is a separate service we can coordinate.

The responsibility argument applies here as elsewhere, and more strongly: on offices, a carpet tile damaged during the move easily turns into a dispute between the remover, the cleaning company and the tenant. One provider across both the removal and the cleaning removes that debate.

How to compare three office removal quotes

Office quotes are particularly hard to compare because scope varies enormously between providers. Six points are enough to put them on the same footing.

The unit of calculation first: per workstation, per square metre, hourly or a lump sum? An hourly price on an office move is a risk for you, not for the provider. The slot next: does the quoted price correspond to a weekday or a weekend intervention? That is the most frequent source of confusion and the gap is real.

Then the shared areas: are meeting rooms, kitchen, store, archive room and network rack counted? IT: disconnection and reinstallation included, or transport only? Archives: standard transport or under seal with a countersigned inventory? And furniture not being taken: disposed of, and through which channel?

One final and very revealing point: ask who prepares the floor plan and the labels. A provider who does not raise that question has not allowed for the part of the work that decides between an operational Monday morning and a Monday morning spent hunting for cables.

Effect of slot and access on the price

Weekend is shown by default because it is the majority choice, but the gap against a weekday slot is real: CHF 1'600 instead of CHF 2'000 on fifteen workstations. The true cost of an office move remains your teams' downtime, however, not the invoice line.