New Office IT Checklist: From Lease Signing to Day One
What to decide and when, from the day the lease is signed to the first working day in your new Dubai office.
Part of our guide to New Office IT Setup.
Start IT planning the day the lease is signed. Decide headcount, comms room location, power and cooling before fit-out drawings are final; order primary and failover internet lines from du or e& early; install cabling and containment during fit-out; then configure the firewall, Wi-Fi, accounts and devices, and test everything before the first working day.
Key takeaways
- IT belongs in the fit-out drawings: cable routes, comms room position, power and cooling are easy to plan and disruptive to change later.
- Order the primary internet line and a separate failover line as soon as the lease is signed, because installation timing is outside your control.
- The comms room needs dedicated cooling, a UPS and a lock, not a leftover storage cupboard.
- Position access points from a Wi-Fi survey of the actual floor plan, and cable them before the ceilings close.
- Test everything before move-in, including failover, and collect a network diagram, asset register, account list and port map at handover.
Why must IT decisions happen before the office fit-out?
Because the fit-out fixes the things IT depends on. Once partitions go up and ceilings close, moving a cable route, a comms room or a power circuit means reopening finished work and going back to building management for approval.
The most expensive IT mistakes in a new office are rarely equipment choices. They are decisions nobody made: containment left off the drawings, the rack placed in a cupboard with no cooling, and Wi-Fi left to whatever router the ISP supplies.
The practical answer is to treat IT as its own workstream within the fit-out, with a named owner, its own dates and a seat in design meetings. The contractor handles the building; the IT owner makes sure the drawings show data points, access point positions, comms room power and cooling, and cable routes. If nobody in-house can take that role, an outside IT partner can fill it from the start. For what each item on this checklist has to cover, see IT requirements for a new office in Dubai.
What does a new office IT setup timeline look like?
A workable timeline runs in phases tied to fit-out milestones rather than fixed dates, because every building and contractor moves at a different pace. Use the table below as the spine of your technology checklist for the new office and give each row an owner. Business line lead times are the item most likely to set the date, and both du and e& publish what they need to start an order.
| Phase | What to decide or do |
|---|---|
| Lease signed | Name an IT owner, confirm headcount plans, order primary and failover internet lines, ask building management about telecom risers and approvals |
| Design and drawings | Fix the comms room location, power, cooling and access control; mark data points, access point positions, meeting room AV and printer locations |
| Fit-out works | Install containment and structured cabling, label every point, install the rack, UPS and dedicated cooling |
| Before ceilings close | Test and certify cabling, confirm access point cables sit at surveyed positions, photograph cable routes |
| Final weeks before move-in | Configure firewall, switches and Wi-Fi; set up Microsoft 365 accounts; prepare laptops, printers and meeting rooms |
| Move-in week | Run end-to-end tests including internet failover, check every user can sign in, have engineers on site for the first working day |
| After opening | Hand over documentation, clear the snag list and agree ongoing support |
How do you plan headcount and the comms room?
Plan for the headcount you expect later in the lease, not the number moving in, and give the network equipment a proper room with power, cooling and a lock.
Headcount and growth
Headcount drives almost every other figure: data points, switch ports, access points, internet capacity and licences. Ask the business for today's number and a realistic number for the coming years, then add points for printers, meeting room screens, access points, CCTV and door access. Spare capacity is easy to add during fit-out and disruptive later.
Comms room location, power, cooling and security
Most small and mid-size offices do not need a server room, because email, files and business applications largely run in the cloud. They do need a ventilated, lockable space for the rack, firewall, switches and ISP equipment. Dubai summers make cooling the critical point: a closed room full of powered equipment heats up quickly, and building air conditioning may run on reduced schedules overnight and over the Saturday and Sunday weekend. Ask for cooling that runs around the clock, a dedicated power circuit and a UPS that rides through short interruptions and shuts equipment down cleanly.
- Keep the comms room away from wet areas, pantries and sun-facing glass walls.
- Fit a lock or access control and record who holds keys or cards.
- Plan the route from the building's telecom riser to your rack so ISP cables are not an afterthought.
When should you order internet lines from du or e&?
Order them the day the lease is signed. Installation depends on the building's existing fibre, landlord access and the provider's schedule, and a late order is a common reason a new office opens without internet.
Ask building management which providers already serve the tower, since some buildings are connected to du, some to e&, and some to both. The application usually needs company documents such as the trade licence, so start the paperwork early.
Plan a second line for failover, ideally from a different provider or over a different path where the building allows it. A firewall with two WAN connections can move traffic to the backup automatically when the primary line drops, keeping Microsoft 365, cloud applications and calls running. A 4G or 5G router can bridge the gap if the second line is late. What a small office plan includes is set out in Microsoft 365 Business Premium.
What happens with cabling and Wi-Fi during the fit-out?
Cabling and containment go in while walls and ceilings are open, so the Wi-Fi design has to be settled first and access point cables have to land in the right places.
Structured cabling and containment
Containment is the trays, conduits and trunking that carry cables; without it, cables end up loose above ceilings and hard to trace or extend. Each run should terminate on a patch panel in the rack, be labelled at both ends and be tested with a certification tester before the ceilings close. For new offices, CAT6A is a sensible default because it supports 10GBASE-T to 100 m and copes better with bundled power-over-Ethernet cables for access points and cameras. Our CAT6 vs CAT6A comparison explains the trade-offs, and the structured cabling service page covers installation and testing.
Wi-Fi survey and access point placement
Access point positions should come from a survey or predictive design based on the real floor plan, including glass partitions, concrete cores and where people will actually sit. Ceiling-mounted business access points, cabled back to the rack and powered from PoE switches, perform far better than a single ISP router. Wi-Fi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax) is a sensible baseline for new equipment. Our guide to why office Wi-Fi is slow covers common causes, and the Wi-Fi installation in Dubai guide explains the survey process.
What should be configured in the final weeks before move-in?
Once power and cabling are live, everything staff will touch on day one is configured and checked.
Firewall and security baseline
- A business firewall on current firmware, with unique admin passwords and remote administration restricted.
- Separate networks for staff, guests, printers and cameras, so a visitor's laptop never shares a network with finance.
- WPA3 on staff Wi-Fi where devices support it, and a separate guest network.
- Multi-factor authentication on every Microsoft 365 account and admin login.
- Endpoint protection, disk encryption and automatic updates on every laptop.
Accounts, Microsoft 365 and devices
Confirm who owns the Microsoft 365 tenant and the domain first; both should sit under company accounts, not an individual's personal login. Create users, assign licences, set up shared mailboxes and file permissions, then prepare laptops so each person signs in and finds email, files and applications ready. Our new employee laptop setup post describes a repeatable process worth adopting now.
Meeting rooms and printers
Meeting rooms need wired connections for screens and conferencing equipment, power and data at the table, and a test call on the platform the team actually uses, such as Microsoft Teams. Printers belong on wired points and their own network segment, with scan to email or shared folders set up and tested before day one.
How do you test office IT before the first working day?
Test every system end to end a few days before move-in, while there is still time to fix problems, and collect the documentation before the project team leaves.
- Unplug the primary internet line, confirm traffic moves to the failover line, then reconnect and confirm it returns.
- Walk the floor with a laptop and phone to check Wi-Fi signal and roaming in every room.
- Sign in as a sample of real users to confirm email, files, printers and business applications work.
- Run a video call from each meeting room and print and scan from each printer.
- Check that the UPS, cooling and monitoring alerts in the comms room work.
Handover documentation
At handover you should receive a network diagram, an asset register with serial numbers and warranties, an account list showing who holds admin access, and a port map linking every data point to its switch port. Store admin credentials in a password manager the company controls.
What should staff be told about IT before the first day in the new office?
The IT can be perfect and the first morning can still be chaos if nobody told the team how it works. Staff arriving at a new office want to know four things: how to connect, where to print, how to use the meeting rooms, and who to call when something does not work. A single message the week before answers all four and removes most of the first-day tickets before they happen.
Send the essentials in one place staff will actually find again, a pinned Teams post or a page on the intranet rather than an email that will be buried by Monday. Include the Wi-Fi name and how devices join it, the location and name of each printer and how to release a job, the name of each meeting room and how to start a call in it, the desk arrangement if it has changed, and the support number and hours. If phone numbers, the office address or email signatures have changed, say so explicitly and update the signatures centrally rather than asking each person to do it.
On the day itself, have someone visible whose only job is IT questions, ideally the engineer who built it, walking the floor rather than sitting in the comms room. Most first-day problems are small and personal: a docking station that needs a different cable, a monitor that will not wake, a laptop that was not on the Wi-Fi list. They are solved in a minute by someone standing there and take an afternoon by ticket. Collect them on a snag list, fix the pattern behind any that repeat, and close the list within the first week.
- One pinned message the week before: Wi-Fi, printers, meeting rooms, support number.
- Signatures, phone numbers and address updated centrally, not by each person.
- An engineer walking the floor on day one, not waiting for tickets.
- A snag list collected on the day and closed within the week.
- Any change that repeats fixed at the cause, not per person.
How Listonics helps with a new office IT checklist
Listonics plans and delivers IT for new offices of roughly 5 to 200 staff across Dubai as a single fixed-scope, itemised project. Work starts with a free site survey, then covers the comms room, structured cabling, network and Wi-Fi, firewall and security, Microsoft 365, laptops, printers and accounts, using equipment from vendors such as Fortinet, Cisco, Aruba and Ubiquiti. Everything is tested before move-in, and you receive a network diagram, asset register, account list and port map at handover. See the new office IT setup service for the full scope, or book a free office IT assessment for your new space.
Frequently asked questions
As soon as the lease is signed, and before the fit-out drawings are finalised. Comms room location, power, cooling, containment and data point positions all need to appear on the drawings, and internet lines from du or e& should be ordered straight away because installation timing depends on the building and the provider.
A common starting point is at least two data points per desk, plus points for printers, meeting room screens, access points, CCTV and door access. Add spare capacity for the headcount you expect later in the lease. A site survey of the actual floor plan confirms the final count.
Usually not. Most small and mid-size offices run email, files and applications in the cloud, so they need a ventilated, lockable comms room or rack space with a dedicated power circuit, a UPS and cooling that runs around the clock. A full server room only makes sense if significant equipment is hosted on site.
A single line is a single point of failure: when it drops, Microsoft 365, cloud applications and calls stop. A second line from a different provider, connected to a firewall with two WAN ports, lets traffic switch over automatically. A 4G or 5G router can act as a temporary backup while a second fixed line is installed.
CAT6A is the safer choice for a new fit-out. It supports 10GBASE-T over the full 100 m channel and copes better with bundled power-over-Ethernet cables for access points and cameras. CAT6 can suit small offices with short runs, but recabling later means reopening ceilings, so the upgrade is easiest to justify during fit-out.
At minimum, a network diagram, an asset register, an account list showing who holds admin rights, and a port map linking each data point to its switch port. Also ask for cable test results, internet account details, warranty information and confirmation that admin credentials are stored in a company-controlled password manager.
How to join the Wi-Fi, where the printers are and how to release a job, how to start a call in each meeting room, whether their desk or phone number has changed, and the support number and hours. Send it as one pinned post the week before, and have an engineer on the floor on the first morning.
Treat it as both. The phases cover everything in the new office that needs power, cabling or a network connection: internet lines, the comms room, Wi-Fi, firewall, laptops, Microsoft 365, printers, meeting room screens, and door access readers or CCTV if they sit on the data network. Anything the fit-out contractor calls technology and anyone else calls IT belongs on the same list, with one named owner.
Written by Srinivasan Ramachandran, Founder, Listonics · Published Aug 28, 2026 · Last reviewed October 29, 2026 · 2354 words
