Unfortunately I've been through this exercise several times in the last
few years. These are general ideas. 

Some of the issues: 
	Most of the people who currently know what they have, how long
they keep it, and how often they use it are probably losing their jobs -
and human nature, they lose all interest in assisting you.  
	Work is continuing as the move is taking place and it's hard to
get a good schedule of what can ship when 
	Current staff don't call things the same or store them the same
as new staff where records will be going so it's difficult to do an
apples to apples transfer
	If there are ongoing audits/litigation/those records have to be
identified and protected 
	  

1.  Communicate that staff should go through files and according to
retention schedule dispose of all that they can 
2.  Do a walk through and note by department large file rooms, number of
file cabinets, etc. 
3.  Run reports if you can from your inactive storage to determine if
there are departments that regularly send paper off at a certain time
and then encourage them to box and get it sent off. (Acct at month end,
HR quarterly etc.) 
4.  Determine who the records will go to in the new offices and call
them to determine how much room they have. Be prepared to talk about "as
is" state  how many and how big are the file rooms, how many cabinets,
etc.  
5.  Ask current staff (sometimes this is all they will do)
    a.to put a yellow sticky note on file drawers that need to go to
offsite storage
    b. put a green sticky note on file drawers that need to go to new
office 
6.  Determine if you will send the records offsite to the current vendor
or do you want them to go offsite to a vendor closer to where the work
will be done (faster retrieval if new office needs them) 
7.  Request additional temp staff for records because at the end of the
day, you will be doing the majority of the work 
8.  If you are lucky, you could request staff from new offices come to
closing location and do walkthrough and consultations to help determine
what should get moved. 

The truth is that records usually had to make a lot of decisions and
because of the time crunch it usually was something like: 

1.  Box everything older than 3 years 
2.  Send everything to current vendor. When recalled do a perm out and
then store closer to new office. 
3.  Work with facilities to label, palletize, etc and get it to the new
location 

It would be wonderful to have an inventory of what gets shipped where,
but the time crunch sometimes makes it impossible.  We always get a good
inventory of what is going off site but just a box inventory of what
gets shipped where.  

Finally the last step is that I had to go to the new offices and help
the new staff sort through quite a lot and then make a determination
what they wanted to do with it.  

And this is just paper - Electronic is another whole exercise. 

Give me a call if you need to talk further. 


Barbara Compton CRM
Calpine Records Manager 
713-570-4645
678-386-1425 cell
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Todd Johnson
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: RIM: Office Closing Best Practices

I was informed today two of our Division offices are closing as part of
an on-
going Company realignment. I have until Monday to come up with a game
plan 
for ensuring all records are accounted for and transferred to their
correct 
location (this could be to a new office in state or our out of state 
headquarters) I have been through large file moves when I worked for a 
record storage vendor, but I'm always looking for best practices/advice
from 
others who have been through similar situations. Any feedback is
welcome.

Thanks,

Todd Johnson, CRM
Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline
270-852-4512
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