“The Move”….
That’s what I kept calling our co-location efforts all these months. The monumental, once in a generation transport of 180 county employees and their desks, chairs, file cabinets, computers, phones, copiers, printers, bookcases, shelving, boxes, boxes, more boxes and family photos from 1 East Main to 200 E Berry. It’s only 1/5 of a mile from door to door. I’ve moved a few times in my life, but a move on this scale is nothing I could have imagined.
We had to use an outside moving company due to the sheer volume, size, and time involved in moving all our stuff. All total, 986.5 man hours went into moving us. If I moved everyone myself during my 8-5 work day, it would have taken me over 24 straight weeks to get the job done (not to mention a gigantic bottle of Aspirin for my back!).
It was both a pleasure and a burden organizing the move from building to building for the county. It took up a lot of my time, but it was a great experience. Besides all the knowledge I gained about buildings, construction and moving, I got to see the best of our county employees and their leaders. People pitched in, went the extra mile, sacrificed, sweated and did everything possible to make this move as easy as possible. I’d like to share some things I have learned through this experience.
Never assume you know how long it will take to move an office. When everything is tucked away in cabinets, drawers, and on shelves it doesn’t look like you have much stuff. Put it all in boxes and you fill up a moving van pretty quick. You don’t think about the hundreds of boxes in the basement, the computers, the file cabinets, etc.
Some people just don’t like change. I did not realize how different the effect change has on people. Some employees were very excited to move, others… not so much. The range of emotions and responses to moving has allowed me to keep my armchair physchologist hat on for quite some time. This knowledge carries over into other areas as well. When we change around programs or work flows, some employees are going to have difficulty adjusting and may act out in unforseen ways, while others may jump at the chance to try it a different way. Some people just don’t like change.
A freight elevator is worth its weight in gold. I’ve never lived in a two story house, so I can’t speak to the joy of moving furniture down a flight of stairs, but it can’t compare to carrying a 12 foot long, solid wood conference table down six flights of stairs. Good, working elevators are essential to a move, especially freight elevators. Being able to put eight thousand pounds of office furniture on a 12×12 freight elevator makes moving in to a new office much easier.
Expect the unexpected, but dont’ make yourself sick worrying. As former Commissioner Bill Brown used to say, there are “known unknowns” and then there are “unknown unknowns”. The former is the unexpected stuff that you will have to address as it comes along. As we have a general idea what the ”known unknowns” might be, we are able to prepare a Plan B. These can be frustrating, but worse yet are the “unknown unknowns” that come out of left field and hit you smack in the face. More than once a completely unexpected problem would arise during the moving process that would leave me speechless for a few minutes (if not longer). Scrambling would ensue, Plan B, C, D & E would be tried until finally someone much smarter than me would think of an answer to the problem. Which leads me to one final lesson…
Surround yourself with good people. For “The Move”, we established a moving committee of people in each department who would help coordinate and facilitate the move between their department, myself and the moving company. These folks were great to work with and made the move as smooth as possible. We hired a professional moving company based here in Allen County who did an excellent job and helped keep me from making poor decisions in coordinating the move. We also had help from our IT vendor, furniture supplier, maintenance staff and finally, all the county employees who had the unenviable task of packing and unpacking county government.
Did I mention this wasy only Phase 1?
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