Advance Relocation Systems Journey To Becoming The Corporate Facilities Relocation Expert Thursday Oct 24, 2019

Since 1939 Advance Relocation Systems has been providing residential and commercial moving services in Maryland. Now, as we celebrate 80 years in business, Advance Relocation Systems has become a well recognized name in the moving sector. We employ our years of experience, proven resources and an extensive Atlas network to put together a moving plan that works for you, earning our reputation as “corporate facilities relocation expert” of the US. With each of our corporate moves, we partner you with our in-house “moving specialist” - Michelle Green who will see your move from end to end. In this article we’ll try to give you an idea of what the corporate facilities relocation process is like and some of the things that we do differently to earn the reputation of “corporate mover” of the US.

Step 1: The First Call 

So your company has made the decision to relocate and you need professional help. The first step is to call us and divulge as much information about your moving plan as possible. When you speak to Michelle, she’ll ask lots of questions like “when are you moving?”, “do you know what you’re going to be moving?”, “how far away are you planning to move?” Those are some essential questions because if we don’t know what you’re moving we can’t provide an accurate quote.

Step 2: The Walkthrough

Once the initial call is over, Michelle will set an appointment to do a walkthrough of the location you plan on moving from. During this walkthrough, Michelle takes the time to 

thoroughly understand the client and their needs, make a detailed inventory of the items to be moved, where they will be moved to, the timeline for the move and more. If there is office equipment like copiers/printers/servers that need to be moved we need to know if you own these items or if they are being leased. If you own them, we find out if you/your I.T department will handle the packing or if you’d like us to handle it. There are specific things that need to be done for safe shipping that will require you to reach out to the manufacturer or whoever services that equipment to get that done prior to the move. If the equipment is being leased, then you’ll need to speak to whoever owns it because technically it isn’t yours and so we can’t move it. 

Aside from electronics, if there’s any furniture to be moved, we discuss whether or not and how these will be taken apart. We also ask about whether you plan to do your own packing or not and if you choose to do this on your own, we offer the materials and instructions and you’ll pack all the drawers and cabinets on your own. We explain how we get everything out of the building (using a freight elevator) and as the tenant you’re responsible for reserving it because there may be fees involved depending on the building and the lease. 

 Step 3: Drafting the Proposal

Once the walkthrough is over, Michelle does her own information gathering to create the first proposal. She will reach out to the building manager to find out if there are any timeline restrictions, (some building managers have an after-hours/weekend restriction), what path the movers have to take, where to park, etc which is unique to each building. She also does a site visit on the destination site where you’re moving to, and from there she puts together a proposal and presents it. Typically you’ll get multiple proposals so from there she just follows up until you make a decision to go with ARS then we start the actual planning of the move.

Step 4: When the move is over

Once you’ve made the decision to move with ARS, we finalize the details of your move and make the necessary preparations. We try to think of every possible scenario and prepare for it to avoid any costly delays. Once we get you to your new location, we offer a “happy crew” to come in and do any fine tuning after the move. Basically, we just send a few movers to help out once the employees are back in the work environment, providing services like gathering boxes or crates, or if the client needs adjustments in case something didn’t quite fit in their new office, etc. We usually discuss with the client if this is something they’ll need ahead of time. We also offer assistance to clients for furniture relocation. If you have furniture that won’t be moving with you, we can provide charity by delivering that furniture to a non-profit instead of sending to a landfill. This way, we end up helping a charity, the client doesn’t have to pay commercial landfill fees and we’re saving the environment too.

Some special considerations (lab moves and retail moves)

Corporate relocations are one of our specialties but it isn’t the only type of commercial move we do. We also handle lab moves, retail moves and transportation of specialized goods/items. If we’re moving a lab, we recognize that each piece of lab equipment is unique. We have climate controlled trucks and we can move freezers that need to be kept plugged in because they have research materials in them. We have trucks where we can transport and keep plugged in -80 °C and -20 °C freezers that have to maintain that temperature throughout the whole move, from origin to destination. We understand the importance of maintaining the right conditions to researchers because it could be 10-20 years or more of research and if it’s not at the right temperature that could be 20 years of work lost. 

When it comes to our ‘retail moves’ this is more of a general term than a reference to what we actually do. Most retail establishments don’t move, so the service we offer is warehousing and goods transportation. We do a lot of install with new retails, so we would receive the product into our warehouse and we’d deliver and install, which is called an RDI. ARS has an 80,000 sq ft warehouse, so we receive the commercial shipments and store them there, we check off the inventory to make sure it's what they ordered on the manifest we receive,we make sure there’s no exterior damage to any of the boxes and we store it until the client’s ready to install it. When that time comes, they simply give us a call and say they’re ready and we transport whatever it is they want us to move. In some cases we can even do light installations but no heavy installations because we’re not licensed to do that.

Our affiliations with Atlas Van Lines and OMA makes international moves a breeze

Advance Relocation Systems is an authorized Atlas agent and has been for the past 50 years. Through our association with Atlas, we are able to assist clients with international moves all across the globe. Atlas has a forwarding company that deals with the airlines, the ground staff and all the other people involved with an international move. As an agent we have access to all of these resources for our clients. 

We are also part of an organization called OMA - Office Moving Alliance and we are a vetted member of that organization. OMA is a network of office and industrial movers around the world that are vetted and are contributing members, which means they pay to be part of this organization. OMA brings together the best of the best, with only one mover/representative being allowed per area.  Being a member of OMA means we can reach out to the OMA mover in a specific area and we can coordinate on that move to make sure its seamless.

At the end of the day, no move is the same, whether it’s a corporate relocation, lab move, international move or a specialized transport. What remains the same regardless of the move is our commitment to making your project easy and stress-free. When you give us a call to discuss your commercial/industrial move, you speak to Michelle and she guides you through from start to finish. Your project won’t be handed off to anyone else, and with over 31 years experience in the industry Michelle definitely knows what she’s doing. Let our corporate relocation experts help your relocation program achieve its goals. Fill out our online quote form to request an estimate for our moving services. If you have any additional questions, contact us today.

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