Facility Moves

If you’ve ever moved personally then you might have a clue how difficult it is and how the “devil is in the details.”  The smallest things can cause the most unimaginable difficulties.  Now, visualize, if you can, being the project manager for an enterprise facility move.

• People
• Offices
• Entire functions
  • IT/IS
  • HR
  • Customer Service
  • Engineering
  • QC/QA/Regulatory Compliance
  • Legal
  • Finance
  • Shipping/Receiving
  • Warehousing
    • All that stock & locations
  • Manufacturing
    • Material/Process Flow
    • Machines
      • Wiring
      • Load bearing

So how do you even begin to get your arms around these killer details without getting yourself fired or committing suicide, much less doing it successfully, on time, and within budget?

Can you be a hero or only a goat?

Following is a brief list of secrets developed over years of trail & error.

Once again, start at the end and at the beginning simultaneously.  You need to take pictures in detail and annotate them.  Create a police like crime scene…a la cartridge casings, body position, footprints, finger prints and EVERYTHING whether or not you think it’s important…because sooner or later it will be critical.

At some point these photos will be invaluable because someone will need to recreate and re-implement the manufacturing process.  So make damned sure your photos are detailed and sharp enough that people can rewire and re-create what pre-existed.  THIS CANNOT BE OVEREMPHASIZED !!!  So get a crane, take aerial pictures, get on the ground, get under it…this is when overkill is OK.

The following is a check list that should suffice for most moves but some modifications might be needed for your situation. In closing, don’t forget to transfer your phones and physical address with both clients and local post office.

In the end, it is pretty simple.  We always have to start with the end in mind.  Additionally, during our time at the old place we probably put a lot of things back together with beer cans and bailing wire.  Furthermore, the people who knew where the strategic beer cans were, may have already left the company or retired.

For this reason, we have to make sure we re-create the scene or at least know what we are going to attempt to change.  People can actually find moves exciting because it is growth and something new.  It can be fun.

That said, there have been situations during IT moves in places like hospitals where procedures got shutdown with patients on the table.  Not cool.  It is pretty sure the patient didn’t like it.

So, here’s the deal, at best if you screw this up you can shut down operations and cost the company money.  At worst, you can get someone killed.  All change, be it personal or physical, comes at a price.  You have to make sure the transitions in your personal life and business are well organized.  If you are the project manager, then that is your job.  Don’t screw it up and get someone killed.

Your path to business success.