Price Forbes Case Study
A controlled floor-by-floor communications migration during a major London office refurbishment.
Moving hundreds of users while a major office refurbishment continued around them
Price Forbes is an independent specialist global wholesale insurance broker with offices in Bermuda, Brussels, Chile, Dubai, London, Malaysia and South Africa.
The company’s United Kingdom operation uses Avaya IP Office to support more than 300 employees. Intuity became involved following a direct recommendation from Price Forbes’ existing IT and infrastructure supplier, with whom Intuity had delivered a previous customer project.
The requirement
A major refurbishment of the London office required employees to move into temporary workspace before returning to completed floors. Every move involved relocating telephone handsets, reconnecting extensions and repatching the associated network connections.
The programme had to keep hundreds of users operational while remaining aligned with the landlord, refurbishment contractors, internal teams and other technology providers.
Planning and governance
Intuity began with a detailed data-gathering session covering the Avaya IP Office environment, user locations, planned migration phases, network requirements, dependencies and testing arrangements.
The findings were used to create a scope of works and project plan. Both documents were maintained and shared throughout delivery so each party had a clear view of responsibilities, risks and timescales.
Phased floor-by-floor delivery
The first phase depended on the landlord making temporary space available on other floors. Once a working area was vacated, employees were relocated and their telephone services were reconnected in the temporary location.
After refurbishment of the original floor was completed, employees and their equipment were moved back. The newly vacated temporary floor could then accommodate the next group. This created a rolling migration across four floors, each supporting approximately 100 to 150 users.
Managing last-minute changes
The landlord changed temporary workspace locations at short notice and introduced delays into the wider building programme. These changes meant that the original communications migration sequence could no longer be followed exactly as planned.
Intuity reviewed the new locations, revised the migration schedule and coordinated the changes with the customer and third parties. The team remained flexible without allowing the changes to disrupt the overall communications project.
Multi-vendor coordination
Price Forbes used several suppliers during the refurbishment. Intuity worked directly with the internal project team, IT and infrastructure provider, landlord, cabling teams and refurbishment contractors.
Clear communication allowed technical or scheduling roadblocks to be identified early and resolved before they could affect the next phase of user moves.
Budget control
The project was completed within the agreed budget. Detailed scoping and repeated internal and customer reviews reduced the risk of overlooked labour, equipment or dependency costs.
Where minor unforeseen costs arose, they were managed without requiring a significant customer budget increase. Any material change would have been documented, explained and submitted to the relevant project owner for approval before work proceeded.
The result
- Hundreds of employees were relocated between temporary and refurbished workspaces.
- Telephone and network connections were repatched and tested during every phase.
- Four office floors were completed using a controlled rolling migration.
- Last-minute landlord changes were absorbed into the project plan.
- Multiple internal and external suppliers remained coordinated.
- The communications work was delivered within the agreed budget.