The Facilities Manager's Complete Relocation Playbook, from the first authorization memo to move-in day.

Every VP of Facilities I have worked with can tell you about the one that slipped. Not the deal that fell apart in negotiation, but the one that closed well and then unraveled during execution — a fiber circuit ordered six weeks late, a Certificate of Occupancy held up because a fire alarm wasn't tested before the AHJ scheduled the inspection, furniture ordered at the wrong time sitting in a warehouse. The deal was good. The execution wasn't. And the business paid for it in delay, in cost overruns, and in the first-day chaos that no one in leadership ever fully forgives.

A relocation is not a real estate transaction that happens to have a construction project attached to it. It is a ten-phase program with dozens of parallel workstreams, long-lead items that must be ordered before permits are even submitted, and external dependencies — city inspection queues, ISP provisioning windows, LL draw timelines — that respond to no amount of internal urgency. Managing one well requires a framework, not a to-do list. This guide is that framework.

It is written for the VP of Facilities or corporate real estate lead who owns the execution — not the CFO who signed the budget authorization, and not the broker who handled the negotiation. It assumes you have already decided to move. Now you have to deliver it.

Phase 01 · Weeks 1–3Needs Assessment & Authorization

The relocation that fails in execution almost always fails because the authorization memo was vague. Someone approved a budget range and a target market, and everyone assumed the details would work themselves out. They do not. The first three weeks of any serious project are the most leveraged time you will have — not for finding space, but for getting precise alignment on what you are actually solving for.

The brief that matters

Before a broker is engaged or a building is toured, four things need to be locked in writing: headcount (current plus 18-month projection, not a round number), the hybrid vs. full-time model that will drive density, any non-standard requirements (server room, training center, loading dock, showroom), and the hard open date separated clearly from the target date. Those are not the same thing. A hard open date is a lease commencement deadline you cannot move. A target date is when you want your people sitting at their desks. Conflating them is how schedules collapse.

Density is the variable most facilities teams underinvest in at this stage. The range between 150 and 250 usable square feet per person is not a rounding error — on a 20,000 RSF lease, it is the difference between comfortably housing your team and being over-committed from day one. That decision should be made before the first LOI is drafted, not during lease negotiation when the broker is under pressure to close.

Budget anchoring

The preliminary budget conversation has three components: TI allowance target (what the market is offering at that rent level and term length), base rent ceiling (the number finance has approved on a per-RSF basis), and a separate capex budget for FF&E and IT that does not come out of the TI. Many facilities teams blur those lines and discover late in construction that the TI is exhausted and the furniture hasn't been ordered. Get CFO sign-off on all three before your broker submits the first LOI.

Phase 02 · Weeks 3–8Site Search & Selection

The site search is where most facilities teams defer entirely to the broker — and where they should not. Your broker's job is to surface the market. Your job is to evaluate it through the lens of your specific operational requirements, not just square footage and rent. The two most common mistakes at this stage are touring too many buildings (which produces familiarity without clarity) and not verifying infrastructure before shortlisting.

What to look for before the LOI

For every building on your shortlist, three checks must happen before you proceed to an LOI. First, confirm fiber availability — not in the neighborhood, but in the actual building. A carrier can have fiber two blocks away and a six-month construction window to get it to your suite. Verify at the point of entry, not at the street. Second, check landlord financial health. A building in CMBS special servicing or with a loan maturity inside your lease term is a different counterparty than it appears on paper. Pull the data or ask your broker to. Third, confirm that your proposed use is permitted as-of-right under current zoning. A variance or conditional use permit adds two to six months to the schedule — and it will surprise you if you don't check.

The scoring discipline

Score every shortlisted building before the internal review meeting — not after the tour, when impressions have already hardened. Rate each on location and commute, building class, floor plate efficiency, parking, HVAC condition, TI allowance offered, asking rent, and landlord financial strength. The buildings that score well across all dimensions are the ones worth going to LOI on. The ones with a strong lobby and weak infrastructure will lose to the ones with a modest lobby and a properly capitalized landlord every time — you just have to make sure your team agrees on that before the tour, not after.

Engage outside real estate counsel now. Not at lease execution. Brief them on the deal structure and timeline so they are ready to move when the LOI is executed and the exclusivity clock starts.

Phase 03 · Weeks 6–14LOI & Lease Negotiation

The LOI is where you set the floor for everything that follows. Every business term you fail to capture in the LOI will be harder to obtain in the lease — because by the time the lease draft lands, the landlord's team has framed the deal around what was agreed, and reopening major terms feels like bad faith. Do not treat the LOI as a placeholder. Treat it as the deal.

Terms that belong in the LOI

Base rent and annual escalations (fixed percentage or CPI, compounded or simple). Free rent — months, structure, and whether it is front-loaded or deferred. TI allowance — per RSF, what it covers, how it is drawn, and how long the landlord has to fund draws. Term length, commencement, and expiration. Renewal options (typically two five-year options, with notice requirements). Termination right, if applicable, with the penalty structure defined. ROFO or ROFR on adjacent space if expansion is possible. Permitted use, broad enough to cover your actual operations and any foreseeable adjacencies. Parking ratio and pricing.

Submit LOIs to your top two candidates simultaneously. This is not a negotiating tactic — it is a scheduling discipline. A single-threaded LOI process leaves you with no alternative if the preferred site fails to execute within the exclusivity window. Keeping the second option alive through LOI negotiation costs nothing and protects the timeline.

The lease redline: what to fight for

Most commercial leases are drafted from landlord forms, and most landlord forms are very good at protecting landlords. The issues worth fighting for in redlines: assignment and sublease rights (you will want the ability to assign without LL consent in connection with a sale or merger); casualty and condemnation provisions (confirm that a partial taking doesn't give the LL an excuse to terminate your lease); CAM audit rights and CAM caps (three to five percent cumulative is standard; uncapped CAM in a multi-tenant building is a long-term budget risk); default cure periods (you want more time than the landlord's standard form will offer); SNDA and non-disturbance from the landlord's lender (critical for any lease longer than five years); and personal property exclusion from the LL's lien (your equipment and fixtures should not be collateral for the landlord's mortgage).

Budget four to six weeks for lease negotiation and three to five redline rounds. The deals that close faster typically left something on the table. The ones that drag past eight weeks usually have a structural problem — a landlord who cannot fund TI, a lender who won't subordinate, or a fundamental business term that was not resolved in the LOI.

Phase 04 · Weeks 10–18Pre-Construction Planning

Pre-construction is the most compressed and most consequential phase of the project. It runs in parallel with lease negotiation, which means decisions are being made before the lease is executed — before you have contractual certainty — which is uncomfortable but unavoidable. A facilities team that waits for lease execution to begin design and IT procurement will not make their move-in date.

Design: the right sequence

The architect of record should be engaged at LOI execution or shortly before. Issue an RFP to two or three firms — require prior experience with tenant fit-outs of similar scope and product type. Award based on fees, schedule, and references, not on the nicest renderings. Execute an AIA B101 contract.

The programming session — where the AOR meets with your business unit leads, IT, HR, and facilities to confirm headcount, adjacencies, room types, and storage requirements — must happen before schematic design, not during it. Buildings that get programmed in design development are the ones that require expensive revisions during construction documents. Front-load that investment.

Design development should include your IT and AV leads in the room. The conference room configuration that looks right on an architectural plan will fail operationally if the AV designer hasn't sized the display for the sightlines, specified the microphone drop locations, or planned the rack room adjacency. Coordinate those disciplines at DD, not during construction when the conduit is already in the slab.

IT and telecom: order before you have a permit

The single most consistent cause of delayed occupancy — across hundreds of transactions — is a fiber circuit ordered too late. Enterprise internet circuits from carriers take 60 to 120 days from order to activation. That timeline begins when the carrier receives the executed service agreement, not when you make the introductory call. Order the primary circuit the day the lease is executed. Order the redundant circuit simultaneously. Do not wait for permits.

If the company runs a private WAN via MPLS or SD-WAN, engage the network team to extend the new location at the same time as the ISP order. Provisioning that connection takes 30 to 60 days after the circuit is live — which means it needs to be in motion before construction is complete. VoIP DID numbers should be provisioned two to four weeks before move-in, not the week of.

The MDF room — the rack room that houses your switches, patch panels, and UPS — needs to be designed in coordination with the AOR before CDs are submitted. Confirm location, dedicated HVAC, 20A dedicated circuits, proper grounding, and cable ladder access. A room that is too small, improperly cooled, or poorly located is an IT problem that persists for the life of the lease.

Permitting: build the timeline backward

Permit timelines by market vary significantly. Suburban markets often clear in two to four weeks. Mid-size cities run four to eight. Major metros — DC, New York, San Francisco, Chicago — routinely take eight to sixteen weeks, and that is before the first round of plan check comments comes back. Build your schedule starting from permit submission and working forward, not from lease execution and working backward.

AHJ plan check comments typically require two to four additional weeks for the AOR to respond and resubmit. Specialty permits — fire alarm, fire suppression, electrical, plumbing, mechanical — are often pulled separately by GC subcontractors and run on independent timelines. Track each independently. A missed specialty permit is what prevents a CO at the finish line after everything else is done.

FF&E: order at permit, not at CO

Lead times on major office furniture manufacturers — Herman Miller, Steelcase, Haworth — currently run ten to sixteen weeks. If you order when the GC issues substantial completion, your team will be waiting for chairs in a finished space. Order furniture when you submit for permits — four to six weeks after the lease executes. Coordinate with the GC on the furniture installation window (which requires flooring and paint to be complete) and make sure those milestones are tracked in the construction schedule.

Phase 05 · Weeks 18–34Construction

Construction management is where the project either holds together or starts to fray. The most common causes of construction schedule slippage are not material costs or subcontractor availability — they are open RFIs, late submittals, and failed inspections. Each of those is a process failure, not a force majeure event. Managing them is what the owner's representative role exists for.

The pre-construction meeting

The first thing that happens after the GC contract is executed is a pre-construction meeting with every party who will touch the project: GC, AOR, your PM, IT, AV integrator, and security vendor. Confirm the schedule, establish the submittal log, document the RFI process, and confirm site logistics — including freight elevator reservation protocols and loading dock hours. This meeting is where the project gets built on paper. A project that skips it builds it in the field, which costs more and takes longer.

What to watch week by week

Run weekly OAC meetings — Owner, Architect, Contractor — with minutes distributed the same day. The open items log and RFI log are the two instruments that tell you whether the project is on schedule. An RFI that has been open for more than seven days without an answer is a schedule risk. Unanswered RFIs are the leading cause of claims, change orders, and delays that could have been avoided with a faster decision from the design team.

Before drywall goes up, walk the space with your IT representative to confirm that low-voltage conduit and rough cabling are in the right locations and that every workstation is covered. What is wrong in the rough stage is a repair cost. What is wrong after drywall is a demolition and repair cost.

The TI draw process

Confirm the LL's draw disbursement process before construction begins — not when the first draw is due. Most leases require AIA G702/703 pay applications with conditional lien waivers from the GC and all sub-contractors. LL funding timelines are typically ten to twenty days after submission. If you are on a tight TI budget, a slow-paying landlord is a cash flow problem that compounds monthly. Track draw submissions and LL funding confirmations as a separate project workstream.

Phase 06 · Weeks 32–35Certificate of Occupancy

The CO is the critical gate. Nothing opens without it. This is the phase where projects that have run smoothly for thirty weeks can lose two to four weeks because a single inspection failed or was not scheduled correctly. The CO process requires more advance planning than most facilities teams give it.

What must be complete before the final inspection

Every life safety system must be fully operational, tested, and certified before the AHJ walks the space. The fire alarm acceptance test — where the fire marshal or AHJ conducts a witnessed test of every device in the system — must be scheduled two to three weeks before the target CO date. A single device failure means a re-test, which means another two-week wait for the inspector's availability. Do not schedule this test for the week before your planned move-in.

Egress must be confirmed — all exit doors operational with proper hardware, corridors clear, signage posted. The electrical final requires all panel schedules to be accurate, GFCI protection installed wherever required, and no open junction boxes. HVAC balancing, which is required for CO in most jurisdictions, should be completed one to two weeks before the target inspection date — not the day before. Building department final inspection, ADA compliance final, and plumbing final are all separate inspections that may or may not be schedulable on the same day.

The Temporary CO strategy

In time-pressured projects, a Temporary CO allows occupancy while a defined list of minor items remains open. The AHJ must agree to the TCO, the GC must post a bond or provide a completion schedule, and the TCO has an expiration date that must be tracked. A TCO is not a permanent solution — it is a tool for getting your team into the space while the last items close out. Budget the follow-up work immediately; letting a TCO expire before the remaining items are complete creates a compliance problem.

Phase 07 · Weeks 10–34Insurance

Insurance is the workstream that gets started late, gets handed to risk management to resolve, and then surfaces as a lease compliance problem two weeks before keys are delivered. Start it early. The lease insurance exhibit specifies exactly what is required, and most of it takes longer than you think to arrange.

What the lease typically requires

Commercial General Liability at $1M per occurrence and $2M aggregate is the baseline — some landlords require $3M. Property insurance at full replacement cost for TI and personal property. Workers' compensation at statutory limits. Umbrella or excess coverage at $5M to $10M depending on the landlord's requirement. The LL and LL's lender must be named as additional insureds on the GL policy, and that endorsement — most commonly CG 20 10 or CG 20 26 — must be in the correct form. A COI that names the LL as a certificate holder instead of an additional insured will be rejected, and you will not receive keys until it is corrected.

Provide the lease insurance exhibit to your company's broker at lease execution, not at substantial completion. Update the company's property policy to add the new location — address, square footage, TI value, FF&E value. If the TI value exceeds $500K, confirm either the LL or GC carries builder's risk during construction.

Phase 08 · Weeks 32–36Pre-Occupancy Activation

Activation is the phase most facilities teams underestimate in its complexity. Getting the space CO'd and getting it operational are not the same thing. A space can have a CO and still not be ready for day one — because the internet circuit isn't live, the access control system isn't programmed, the janitorial contract isn't signed, or the employee communication package hasn't been distributed.

Utilities: two to three weeks lead time

Electric and gas account transfers or new account setups require two to three weeks with commercial utilities. Start that process at substantial completion, not at CO. Confirm the rate class, identify the demand charge structure, and budget for a deposit if the company is establishing a new account at the address. In multi-tenant buildings, water and sewer are typically billed through the LL — confirm in the lease before you spend time setting up an account that doesn't need to be set up.

Building operations contracts

Janitorial, HVAC preventive maintenance, pest control, and waste and recycling service all require executed contracts before occupancy — not after employees move in and start filing complaints. The janitorial spec should confirm frequency, key and access arrangements, and whether supplies are included or billed separately. The HVAC PM contract should include a minimum quarterly service schedule and a defined protocol for after-hours calls. These are not afterthoughts. They are the baseline of what it means to operate a facility.

Life safety and compliance

OSHA 29 CFR 1910.38 requires a written Emergency Action Plan before occupancy — including evacuation routes, assembly points, floor warden assignments, and an emergency contact list. Evacuation maps must be posted at each exit. AEDs must be mounted, registered with local EMS, and staff must be trained on their use. None of this happens automatically at CO. It requires someone to own it, and that person is typically the VP of Facilities.

Employee readiness

Distribute the employee communication package two weeks before move-in — not the week of. It should include the new address, parking instructions, badge and access protocol, IT setup instructions, building amenities, and emergency procedures. Update the IRS address on Form 8822-B, state tax agencies, bank, insurance carriers, and all vendor accounts at the same time. These are the items that seem administrative until one of them causes a problem — and one of them always does.

Phase 09 · Weeks 34–36Move Execution

The move itself is the shortest phase and the most visible one. It is the moment where eighteen months of planning either holds together or falls apart in front of every employee in the company. The moves that go well are not the ones with the best movers — they are the ones with the most disciplined pre-move preparation.

The server room move is different from everything else

Schedule the IT equipment move separately from the main move — typically the night before or the weekend before employee move-in. This is the workstream where chain-of-custody matters and where the wrong sequence creates an outage. Confirm that the network is live at the new location before servers are decommissioned at the old one. That sentence sounds obvious. It is also the thing that gets compressed under schedule pressure and causes the most day-one chaos when it goes wrong.

Day one readiness

The VP of Facilities should be on-site opening morning before employees arrive. Walk the entire space. Confirm that every workstation has network connectivity, every printer is mapped, every phone is active, and VPN is functional. The welcome kit at each workstation — building guide, Wi-Fi credentials, parking instructions, emergency contacts, facilities contacts — should already be there. Employees who arrive on day one to a complete and functional workspace will forget the move in two weeks. Employees who arrive to a space that isn't ready will remember it for the duration of the lease.

Phase 10 · Weeks 36–42Project Close-Out

Project close-out is the phase that disciplines the next project. The facilities teams who execute consistently well are the ones who treat close-out as seriously as construction — because the as-builts, the warranty log, the lien releases, and the lessons learned document are the foundation of everything that comes next.

Financial close-out

Submit the final TI draw with unconditional lien waivers and confirm that the full TI allowance has been received. Collect unconditional final lien waivers from all subcontractors and suppliers through the GC. Reconcile actual costs against the authorized budget, document all change orders, and file for finance and audit. The final budget reconciliation is also the document that tells you whether your TI allowance estimate was calibrated correctly — and that information is directly usable on the next transaction.

Document control

As-built drawings — reflecting any field changes from the approved CDs — should be received from the AOR and GC and filed in your lease record and facilities database. These are the documents you will need when you reconfigure the space in year four of the lease, and they are the documents that are most reliably lost if you do not collect them at close-out. The O&M manuals for all installed systems — HVAC, electrical, plumbing, fire alarm — should be collected at the same time, along with warranty start dates, durations, and manufacturer service contacts for each piece of equipment.

Critical date calendar

Enter the following into your IWMS or lease management system at close-out: rent commencement and expiration, free rent expiration, CPI adjustment dates, option exercise windows (typically twelve to eighteen months before expiration), and the TI deadline. The option exercise windows are the dates that kill tenants who lose track of them — a missed option exercise window at month 114 of a ten-year lease is an irreversible loss of negotiating position. That date should be on someone's calendar before the first rent check is written.

Lessons learned

Write a one-page debrief: what went well, what didn't, where the timeline slipped and why, how vendors performed. File it. The facilities teams that consistently execute well treat each project as a case study — not in a formal after-action review sense, but in the sense that the next project benefits from what the last one taught. That institutional knowledge lives in the debrief document, not in anyone's memory.

Critical PathThe items that decide your move-in date

Every item in this playbook matters. But the following items determine your move-in date — because a delay in any one of them cannot be recovered by accelerating anything else. These are the long-lead items, the external dependencies, and the process gates where most projects lose time.

Any one of these missed is a delayed move-in. None of them can be compressed by working harder internally. They are all external timelines. The only variable you control is when you start them.

Timeline reference