An office move fails at the loading dock far more often than it fails at the desk. The furniture is predictable. The building is not — and a locked service elevator on a Friday evening, with nobody answering the property manager's line, turns a planned weekend into a lost one.
Three things need to exist in writing before a date is worth holding.
One: the elevator booking, confirmed by the right person
Office buildings reserve the service elevator for a move window, and often lock off the passenger cars for the duration. The booking has to come from the building or property manager — not the concierge, not the security desk, and not a verbal "that should be fine" from whoever answered.
Get an email that states:
- The date and the exact time window
- Which elevator is reserved and how it is keyed or padded
- Any deposit, and what returns it
- What happens if the move runs past the window
That last line is the one people skip and the one that costs them. A window that ends at 10:00 pm with no extension path means the truck stops at 10:00 pm, loaded or not.
Two: the certificate of insurance, on file in advance
Commercial buildings generally require a certificate of insurance naming the building corporation — and frequently the property management company as well — as an additional insured. Most want it on file at least a couple of days ahead, not handed over at the door.
What to check on it:
- The named parties match exactly what the building asked for, including the numbered company if there is one
- The address on the certificate is the building's, spelled the way the building spells it
- The dates cover the whole move window, including an overnight if the load sits
We issue the certificate when a commercial move is booked and send it to both buildings ourselves. If you are comparing companies, ask whoever else you are speaking to how their certificate gets to the building and who follows up when the building says it never arrived. The answer is a decent proxy for how the rest of the coordination will go.
Three: a named contact with a mobile number
Somebody at each building must have the authority to unlock a dock, extend a window, escort a crew, or re-issue paperwork — and be reachable on the day.
Get a name and a mobile number, and test the number on the Friday. A building contact who only answers a desk line is not a contact for a move that runs into the evening.
Without all three, you are relying on a weekend security guard having been briefed. Sometimes they have been.
After-hours and weekend access has its own rules
Most office moves run from Friday evening through Sunday so that the team walks into a working office on Monday. Off-hours access adds its own layer:
- Security escort. Some buildings require a guard to accompany the crew through the building for the entire window, and bill for it.
- Cards and codes. Which crew members get access, and when the cards deactivate. They usually expire automatically at the end of the booked window, which is a problem if the window moves.
- Building services on weekend settings. Heating, cooling and lighting may be on a reduced schedule. Lighting on the move floor sometimes has to be manually enabled — worth knowing before a crew is carrying a desk down an unlit corridor.
- Dock hours. Some buildings restrict loading dock access to set hours even for tenant moves, and even on the weekend they sold you the window for.
These are all building decisions, made by the building. What a moving company can do is ask about every one of them before the date is held, and confirm the answers in the week before the move — which is exactly when a wrong assumption is still fixable.
Two buildings, two rule sets
Almost every office move involves moving out of one building and into another, and each has its own booking process, certificate requirements, time windows, security policy and dock procedure. The job is keeping the two timelines aligned.
A clean Friday-to-Sunday move-out paired with a Saturday-to-Monday move-in usually works. Where it breaks is the mismatch: the source building requires you out by Friday end of day, the destination will not admit anyone until Sunday morning, and the truck sits loaded in between. That is not automatically a disaster — but it changes the plan, the sequencing and the coverage conversation, and it needs to be known at the scoping stage rather than discovered on the Saturday.
Send both buildings' rules when you ask for a plan. A schedule built without them is a guess.
What building coordination should cover
When we take on a commercial move, the building-side work is part of the job rather than an add-on:
- Certificate of insurance issued and filed with both buildings ahead of the move window
- Elevator reservation confirmed in writing with each building or property manager
- A move-day contact identified at each end, with numbers exchanged both ways
- Floor and corner protection carried for both addresses — commercial corridors take more abuse than residential ones and have less soft furnishing to absorb it
- A crew briefing on each building's specifics: which entrance, where to park, who to ask for, what is off-limits
Questions that come up
How far ahead should the elevator be booked? For a mid-week booking in a residential strata, a few days is usually enough. For an office building, plan on one to two weeks, and longer for a large downtown tower or for a weekend window. Book before you commit to a date with your team.
The elevator is already reserved for our date. Now what? Ask the building about a Friday evening or a Sunday morning slot. Off-peak windows are the ones with availability, and they suit an office move anyway.
Does the building charge for the elevator? Many commercial buildings charge a use fee, a refundable damage deposit, or both. Those are billed by the building to you, not by us — confirm the amount with the manager so it is not a surprise line in your own budget.
Who holds the dock key or access card? Typically the building issues it to one named crew member at the start and takes it back at the end. Establish who that person is before the day rather than in the lobby.
The one thing worth doing early
Walk the loading bay before move week, at roughly the time of day the move will happen. Look at where a truck actually fits, how far the carry is to the elevator, whether the bay is shared with another tenant, and whether the door you were told to use is the door that opens.
Ten minutes there answers questions that a floor plan never will. Bring what you learn to us and the schedule you get back will be one that survives contact with the building. Start your move brief, or call 778-994-2303. The wider scope sits on the commercial moving page.