The challenge

A [general contractor](/industries/construction/) headquartered in Staten Island was moving from a 4,000 sq ft space they had outgrown into a 9,200 sq ft converted industrial building two miles away. The new building had no usable existing cabling, no telephone system, no Wi-Fi infrastructure, and no AV in the conference room. The owner did not want to spend two weeks operating from a half-installed office. The CFO did not want to lose a single business day. We were brought in by the architect handling the buildout to handle the entire IT stack on the same schedule as the painters, electricians, and HVAC contractors.

The plan

Six weeks before the move, we did a site walk with the architect, electrician, and HVAC contractor. We agreed on cable pathways, IDF and MDF locations, power and cooling requirements for the new server closet, and the AV requirements for the new conference room and break room. Cabling rough-in started two weeks before move-in date.

What we installed

Structured cabling. 120+ Cat6A copper drops to every workstation, conference room, and AV location. OM4 multimode fiber backbone between IDFs. All drops certified to TIA-568 standards with a Fluke certifier. Documented patch panel labeling and an as-built drawing delivered as PDF.

Network. Cisco Meraki MX firewall, MS switches, and MR Wi-Fi 6 access points. Eight APs designed from a heat-map survey. VLANs for staff, guest, IoT (printers, conference room equipment), and a dedicated VLAN for the legal hold server room. Centrally managed.

Phones. Microsoft Teams Phone deployed for all 35 staff. Numbers ported from their legacy carrier (process started two weeks early). Auto-attendant configured. No physical PBX — every staff member uses the Teams app on their workstation, with a few executive desk phones for those who prefer it.

Conference room AV. Logitech Rally Bar with a single 65” display, Zoom Rooms certified, integrated with their M365 calendars. Touch-panel scheduler outside the door. Wireless presentation. Sound treatment recommendations coordinated with the GC during buildout.

Break room AV. A second display with Apple TV for casts, plus background audio integrated with the office Sonos system.

Server closet. Properly sized rack with managed PDUs, environmental monitoring, and labeled patch panels. Two dedicated 20A circuits, separate UPS, and HVAC sized for the heat load.

The cutover weekend

Friday at 6:00 PM, staff packed their personal items and went home. We arrived at 6:30 PM, picked up the rack from the old office, ran final pre-flight tests on the new infrastructure, racked the equipment, and verified mail flow, file shares, phones, and internet.

Saturday and Sunday were monitoring days. We walked the space, fixed minor cosmetic items, validated every drop, and ran a final acceptance test. Monday at 7:00 AM the first staff member arrived, plugged in, and was working in 90 seconds.

What went right

Standardization. Documentation. Lead time. The buildout architect and the GC both told the owner this was the smoothest IT cutover they had seen on a project. We mostly did the work six weeks earlier; the weekend was just the final assembly.

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