19 days left in Printing House Street

It's feels like a complex move. I'm talking just editorial here, but that's still well over 100 individuals to up and go from an office their papers have been based at since the mid-1960s. The filing cabinets, the drawers, the notebooks, the piles of papers... and that's not even thinking about desks and computers.

The move is likely (final detail still to be confirmed!) to take place mainly over four intensive days, with November 14 strongly pencilled in as the start date. If it goes well, it'll be all but over by Monday November 17 although, of course, a contingency plan exists that can stretch the move until Nov 24 if needed.Even taking the maximum time, it's a mammoth task.

Fortunately, other parts of the Post & Mail (now called BPM Media) have already relocated. An example was Advertising Production Control (APC) which deals with the final output of all newspapers, ensuring adverts are accurately assigned to pre-destined pages in each publication.

No-one's saying it was easy, but scores of people in that department moved within a few days, banks of terminals disappearing from Printing House Street and then reappearing at Fort Dunlop almost overnight. There were IT teething problems and a few stretched deadlines... but not a publication was missed.

It's from this episode of the move that the Fort Dunlop project team have picked up lessons, and now they are readying editorial.

The main constituent part is IT, of course, both physically in terms of equipment and virtually in terms of wiring and connections. That's gone smoothly elsewhere to date and there's no reason why, with the hard work of our IT colleagues, it shouldn't continue with editorial.

That leaves us and our files, debris from years in one place, notebooks and pens, reference material, in and out-trays and pen organisers. But when I think about it, it may be that we just take the minimum that will fit in a box and dump a lot that we rarely use.

Because as long as the computer side goes well, that's all that really is needed to start afresh in a new building. Imagine a paperless (or paper-minimised) office. The new chairs and desks are already in situ. We're finalising seating plans which are bound to be tweaked for weeks after the move. But as long as we turn up, it should all be ready to roll.

So all we really need to do personally is to re-organise our own office paraphenalia into a box or two (or in a few cases an extra drawer or so in filing cabinets).

Yes, the hardest physical part of the move for us is to finally bring ourselves to leave and bin most of the residue we haven't looked at or needed for years.

Perhaps it won't be so complex after all.