Consolidating seven locations into one unified headquarters

What we did

The programme involved consolidating seven office and data centre locations across the city into one headquarters building. The existing building was occupied by around 5,000 people. The work required close coordination across workstreams and stakeholders from the different business units. 

To enable a seamless transfer and avoid disrupting client work, we approached the project in two phases. The first was to move the teams into the headquarters building. The second was to decommission the old sites and restructure the technology environment at the new site to make it more effective for the larger population. 

In the first phase, we moved 3,000 people from seven separate business units who were based across three legacy locations – some businesses moved multiple times. The units each operated independently with differing collaboration platforms, wireless infrastructure, AV standards and hybrid cloud/on-prem environments. The move was an opportunity to align systems so that everyone could benefit from common standards and ways of working. 

The second phase involved decommissioning the existing offices as well as their on-prem infrastructure. This included 21 floors of phones, monitors and AV equipment to move or dispose of as well as multiple network closets and onsite mini data centres.  

At the new location, we managed the upgrade of AV across 230 meeting rooms and refreshed the wireless network. This was a phased migration to minimise business impact. For the Wi-Fi refresh, the team worked across 13 weekends to complete the most disruptive work. AV installation and the removal of old equipment was also completed in batches to avoid disruption to whole floors or business units. Familiarisation sessions were held weekly to assist with user adoption and there was always a project team member onsite to assist with issues and escalations. 

We also established a new technology service desk to support the expanded population of the headquarters. 

Results

We created a more scalable and supportable workplace environment while reducing operational complexity across the organisation’s New York footprint. 

As part of the consolidation, we successfully eliminated redundant infrastructure and reduced operational overhead, setting the business up for simpler future expansion. 

The programme was delivered under budget, even allowing for the substantial amount of out-of-hours working. 

Most importantly, the people involved in the move had minimal disruption to their day-to-day work, so there was little or no impact on clients. 

Technology in scope

AV: room booking, Logitech room booking panels, Polycom, Neat, Google boxes and Mercury devices. 

Network: Cisco switches/WAPs and Meraki security cameras.