As of 18th August 2011 Business Training will no longer live at Sevendale House – our home for the last 32 years.
Our new address will be: 8–10 Dutton Street, Manchester, M3 1LE, England.
We’ve known for about a year that we’d need to move. Our lease was coming up for renewal and the landlord plans to refurbish the building – as well as wanting to increase the rent!
It Takes Time to Find the Right Premises
A year may seem like a long time but actually it’s gone by incredibly fast. It took us six months to find a suitable property, at the rent we could afford in the location we wanted to be in.
Firstly, we needed to find premises with equal amounts of warehousing and office space – a combination not easy to find in central Manchester. There has been a lot of development in recent years where landlords have smartened up their properties to house expensive, character offices and are charging high rents.
Secondly, we didn’t want to move out of the center of the city if we could avoid doing so, as we’d probably lose valuable staff. As well as having to find and retrain new staff there would be the cost of paying constructive redundancies. And, actually, I like our staff and don’t want to lose them.
Thirdly, once we’d found a suitable place to rent, we had to enter into negotiations with the landlord and then it went into the hands of solicitors! Plus, the premises needed some maintenance which, to give our new landlord his due, he has done.
And once all this was finalised we’ve had to, install cabling for the computers, telephones and emergency lighting.
All this takes time. Everything will be ready for us to move next week – but only just. Trust me, a year isn’t a long time.
Careful Planning
As with any move, moving offices is a major project that needs careful planning so as not to disrupt business and cause inconvenience to your customers.
David Pendlebury (our MD) has done a great job with this. Thanks to his planning and negotiation skills the move should go reasonably smoothly.
But the work isn’t over once we’re in. We then have to inform all our students, suppliers and potential students of our new address, phone and fax numbers. All promotional and course material needs updating as well.
Next week I’ll put together a checklist of all the things you need to think about when you move a business. In the meantime, if you are planning a move, check out our new Project Management course and the links below. Careful planning will save you time as well as helping you avoid costly mistakes.
