This case study runs through the office relocation of the Head Office of a WA Mining Company. The Head Office housed 80+ workers with associated IT equipment with computers, monitors, phones, servers, switches, routers and services. As the Head Office a number of services was onsite that ran their 24/7 site operations which meant that minimal disruptions and tight timeframes to get core critical services back up and running.

Customer Profile:

Industry: Mining Iron Ore, West Australia
Employees: 600+ employees across three WA mine sites and one Perth office
Solution: Head Office Relocation

About our Customer:

Leading independent player in the Australian iron ore industry. Established in Perth in 1996 and listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) in 2002, the company owns and operates over three WA mining sites with its head office based in Perth.

Business requirements:

  • Office relocation of 80+ users to new Perth premises, including computers, phones and printer equipment.
  • To meet a strict overall project deadline, the move commenced at 6pm Friday through to early Monday morning to ensure outages are minimal and staff productivity was unaffected.
  • Strict core services outage window of 6pm Friday through to 3am Saturday to ensure the phone systems on the mine sites were unaffected.
  • Relocate entire server infrastructure for the main Perth office which hosts services for all sites:
    • All desktop phone services.
    • Email.
    • Internet for mine sites and Perth office.
    • Core business applications for multiple sites.

Business goals and challenges:

  • Minimal disruption for all employees and to continue work as left off.
  • Maintained project and relocation deadlines.
  • Project management of multiple third parties involved in the relocation, including; removalists, various telecommunication companies, cabling companies and premise management.

Process:

  • Full audit of how the current server and network environments were setup to ensure quick and easy reinstallation at the new location.
  • Weekly communications and meetings with customer stakeholders for updates on the progress and any foreseeable issues.
  • Regular communications and meetings with third party vendors to ensure the progression of requirements were met, potential issues were eliminated and deadlines were clear and adhered to.
  • Planning and engagement of moving the server hardware and ensuring there was no damage during the removal.
  • Creation of rack diagrams for the new office ensured that reinstallation time was reduced and completed efficiently.
  • Planning and movement of user’s computers, checking access to the server and cable management.
  • Installation of server in the rack, patch-in server equipment and desktops.
  • Creation of test plans to ensure core services were running as expected.
  • Provide next day IT support.

Value to business:

The office relocation was completed with:

  • Minimal loss of productivity across all sites.
  • Reduced stress of overall office relocation, with Future Logic taking care of all the IT relocation requirements.
  • Head office users were able to continue work on Monday morning as if nothing had changed.

Testimonial

“The team at Future Logic planned and coordinated all aspects of the office relocation which was completed over a weekend efficiently and within the scheduled time frame. Equipment was safeguarded and safely transported, with follow-up of postmove queries being prompt.”

Peter Kerr, Chief Financial Officer, Mount Gibson Iron Limited (ASX Listed Mining Company)