Every power, data and peripheral run gets labelled at both ends, and the back of the desk gets photographed before anything is unplugged, which sounds excessive until the day you meet a trading desk with four screens and two docks and nobody who can remember which port fed which. Patch leads are bagged per desk and the bag is labelled to the destination seat, not to the origin one. Redundant cable, and there is always redundant cable, comes out and goes to WEEE rather than back into the trunking. Monitors, arms and docks are wrapped, and anything fragile goes into a case.
Serials go on the list as the kit comes off the desk, not later from memory. Desktops, laptops, docks, screens, headsets and anything else with a number on it are recorded against desk ID and user. The list travels with the load. Where devices are being retired rather than moved, we split the data bearing items out there and then, and they go to the shredder with make, model and serial scanned into a certificate of destruction, while the rest goes through WEEE with its own certification. Facilities, IT and procurement all end up looking at the same spreadsheet, which is usually a first.
Almost all of this happens out of hours, because a floor cannot be decommissioned around people who are using it. We book the loading bay and the lift with building management, produce the risk assessments and method statements (RAMS) that the landlord will want to see before anybody sets foot on site, and work floor by floor so that the teams still in the building carry on as normal. At the destination we drop desks to the seating plan, reconnect, power on and test, then hand over against the move matrix with photographs. Packaging leaves with us. Anything not moving goes to storage at Heathrow or Farnborough, or straight to disposal.
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