An office move in Chelsea, with the network running before the movers.

Movers on the 15th. A floor still under renovation.

The team was moving two blocks to a renovated floor in Chelsea. Movers were booked for January 15.

Building management kept trades off the floor until about January 10 while new floors went in. That left a few working days to get the network ready, with no way to start early.

A video call found cable we could reuse.

In early December we walked the floor over FaceTime. The previous tenant had left its cabling in place, including six ceiling drops for access points.

Reusing it meant no new cable runs and no conduit work. The network design and the estimate went out the same day.

One rack, six access points, every run labeled.

• UniFi Dream Machine Pro gateway
• UniFi Pro Max 24 PoE switch
• Six U7 Pro XG Wi-Fi 7 access points on the existing ceiling drops
• Rackmount battery backup
• Every run tested end to end and labeled: six access point drops, ten data drops

The switch we planned on was out of stock until February. We moved up to the Pro Max 24 PoE so the date didn’t move.

Staff and guests are on separate networks, with guest Wi-Fi isolated. Ownership of the network went to their IT lead at handoff.

On site at 10. Done by early afternoon.

Parts were ordered on January 7 and arrived the next day. On January 12 we were on site from about 10 to 2, and the fiber install window landed in the middle of our visit.

By early afternoon the network was set up and tested, three days before the movers.

Then the desks and the meeting rooms.

We came back on January 16 and 19 to set up about 45 workstations and three Zoom Rooms. One room moved over from the old office and two were new.

We also set up an 85-inch screen with a camera for all-hands meetings in the open space. Everything was installed, tested and handed off by January 22.

Related: Build-Outs & Moves, Business Networking & Wi-Fi, New York City