Office Move-In Guide

First 24 Hours Checklist

A do-this-now checklist for your first day. Collect documents, build contacts, confirm dates, define Minimum Viable Opening (MVO), and start the tracker.

working draft Updated Jun 2, 2026

First 24 Hours Checklist

The companion to The First 24 Hours. Print it, copy it into your tracker, or just work down it. The goal isn’t to finish everything — it’s to create a clean picture and one place to keep it. Where you can’t complete an item, write “unknown” and move on.

How to use it

Work top to bottom in one sitting if you can. Anything you can’t answer becomes the first set of entries in your Open-Item Tracker, each with an owner and a next action.

The checklist

1. Collect the project documents

  • Signed lease or sublease
  • Work letter / tenant-improvement exhibit
  • Building rules and regulations
  • Building moving policy
  • Insurance requirements — the certificate of insurance (COI) language the building requires
  • Approved drawings or furniture plans
  • Scopes of work from the general contractor (GC), designer, audio/visual (AV), IT, and furniture vendors
  • Furniture inventory
  • Vendor quotes and open proposals
  • Property-manager correspondence
  • Any pending approval requests
  • Current move date / target opening date

2. Build the contact list (into the Vendor Directory)

  • Internal: decision maker, workplace lead, People/HR, IT, finance/procurement, legal
  • Building: property manager, security desk, loading dock / freight elevator, landlord, sublandlord
  • Vendors: GC, electrician, architect/designer, furniture, mover, IT, AV, security, janitorial, pantry
  • Every name has a role attached (no orphan names)

3. Confirm the hard dates (write “unknown” if not confirmed)

  • Earliest access date
  • Target opening date
  • Employee move-in date
  • Mover arrival
  • Furniture delivery + install
  • IT / network installation
  • AV installation
  • Security / access setup
  • Final cleaning
  • Property-manager approvals
  • Old-space move-out / surrender date (if any)
  • Marked which dates are flexible vs. fixed

4. Define Minimum Viable Opening

  • Written the one-paragraph standard for “ready” (see Minimum Viable Opening)
  • Shared it where the team can see it

5. Start the open-item tracker

  • Created one Open-Item Tracker
  • Logged every gap above as an item with an owner and next action
  • Identified the handful of items that could block opening day

Done when

You have one place where everything lives, a contact for every role (or a note that one’s missing), your dates (or your list of unknowns), your MVO paragraph, and a started tracker. That’s control.