New Office IT Setup Checklist: What to Budget & Schedule Before Move-In (Dubai)

Why IT Setup Should Start Before You Sign the Lease

Most companies treat IT as something that happens after the lease is signed, after the fit-out designer has drawn the layout, and after furniture has been ordered. By the time IT gets a seat at the table, the ceiling grid is already specified, the electrical first-fix is scheduled, and there's no runway left to plan a comms room, request a riser access permit from the building's facilities management, or lead-time a fibre order from a telecom provider. The result is almost always the same: exposed cabling trunking bolted on after the fact, a "temporary" internet connection that stays temporary for three months, and a move-in date that slips because nobody can log into anything.

The fix is simple in concept: get an IT infrastructure specialist involved during the site-selection or lease-negotiation stage, not after. A specialist such as GC Technologies — a Dubai-based IT solutions and hardware provider under Ground Control General Trading LLC — can walk a shortlisted unit with you before you sign, flag whether the riser and comms room location will work for your headcount, confirm whether existing cabling (if any) is reusable, and give you a realistic lead-time picture for the internet circuit, the server room build-out, and the security system. That single site visit, done two to three months before move-in, is the difference between an IT setup that finishes on schedule and one that becomes the reason the whole office opens late.

This matters more in the UAE than in many other markets because several of the biggest lead-time items — telecom circuit provisioning, DEWA (or relevant authority) power connections for server rooms, civil defense approvals for CCTV and access control in certain building types, and import lead times on branded server and networking hardware — are outside your direct control. Planning around them, rather than discovering them mid-fit-out, is what keeps a project on schedule.

The 90-60-30 Day Setup Timeline

A practical way to sequence new office IT setup in Dubai is to work backward from your move-in date in three blocks: 90 days out, 60 days out, and 30 days out. Each block has a distinct set of tasks that need to be locked before the next block can start.

90 Days Before Move-In: Design and Order

• Site survey of the unit (or shortlisted units) with an IT infrastructure provider to assess riser access, comms room location, ceiling void depth for cable containment, and power availability.
• Headcount and departmental layout finalized enough to estimate data points, phone points, wireless access point (AP) coverage, and CCTV camera positions.
• Internet connectivity order placed with the chosen telecom provider — this is frequently the longest lead-time item in the entire project, especially if new fibre needs to be pulled into the building.
• Server and networking hardware specified and ordered (Dell or HPE servers, Cisco switches and firewalls, rack, UPS) — branded enterprise hardware can take several weeks to arrive depending on model and configuration.
• Structured cabling scope and drawings finalized with the fit-out team so first-fix cabling can be sequenced correctly against electrical and ceiling works.

60 Days Before Move-In: First-Fix and Procurement

• First-fix cabling installed — containment, back-boxes, riser cabling, and fiber uplinks between floors or to the comms room, done before ceilings and walls close up.
• Comms/server room fit-out begins: flooring, dedicated cooling unit, power circuits, and rack installation.
• CCTV and access control hardware ordered and cabling routes confirmed alongside the structured cabling first-fix.
• IP telephony platform selected and number porting (if applicable) initiated — porting existing landline numbers can take longer than expected and should be started early.
• Confirm any building-management approvals needed for external antennas, satellite dishes, or rooftop equipment if relevant to your connectivity plan.

30 Days Before Move-In: Second-Fix, Testing and Cutover

• Second-fix installation: wall outlets, patch panel termination, switches racked and configured, wireless access points mounted, CCTV cameras and access control readers installed.
• Cable testing and certification — every cabling contractor should hand over test certificates per point, not just a verbal "it works."
• Internet circuit activated and tested with failover configured (see connectivity section below).
• Server, firewall and Wi-Fi configuration; user accounts, printers, and phone extensions provisioned.
• Walkthrough and snagging — test every data point, every camera view, every door reader — before staff arrive, not on day one with 40 people watching.

Structured Cabling & Network Infrastructure Checklist

Structured cabling is the physical nervous system of the office — every device, from a desk phone to a wireless access point to a CCTV camera, ultimately connects back through it to the comms room. Getting the office network cabling checklist right at design stage avoids expensive rework later, since cabling is one of the few systems that becomes genuinely difficult to modify once ceilings and walls are closed.

• Cable grade: CAT6 is the practical baseline for most office data and VoIP points today; CAT6A is worth the extra cost for comms rooms, high-density zones, and any run likely to carry higher-bandwidth traffic (10 Gbps switch uplinks, for example) over its lifetime.
• Points per workstation: Plan for a minimum of two data points per desk (data plus VoIP handset), with meeting rooms, reception, and open-plan zones needing extra drops for screens, video-conferencing units, and wireless access points.
• Fiber uplinks: Any office spanning more than one floor, or with a comms room some distance from the main work area, needs a fiber backbone between the main distribution point and each floor's local distribution point — copper alone won't reliably carry aggregate traffic across long or multi-floor runs.
• Patch panels and cable management: Every cable run should terminate on a labeled patch panel in the comms room, with proper cable management arms and clear, consistent labeling on both ends — this is what makes future moves, adds and changes (MACs) fast instead of a treasure hunt.
• Wireless access point (AP) planning: Don't rely on a couple of consumer routers. A proper AP survey based on floor plate, wall material, and expected device density avoids dead zones, especially in meeting rooms with glass partitions, which are notorious for weakening Wi-Fi signal.
• Testing and certification: Every point should be tested and certified against the relevant cabling standard, with documentation handed over — this becomes your reference for any fault-finding down the line.

Providers such as GC Technologies handle structured cabling end-to-end — design, containment, termination, testing and certification — alongside the networking hardware (Cisco switches, routers and wireless controllers) that sits on top of it, which avoids the coordination gap that happens when the cabling contractor and the networking hardware supplier are two separate, uncoordinated vendors.

Server Room / Comms Room Requirements

Whether you need a full server room or a modest comms cabinet depends mostly on headcount and how much infrastructure stays on-premise versus in the cloud. Either way, a few requirements are non-negotiable for a UAE office setup.

• Dedicated, lockable space: Networking equipment, servers and telephony gear should never sit in an open-plan cupboard shared with stationery. Physical access needs to be controlled and logged.
• Power: A dedicated circuit (or circuits) separate from general office power, sized with headroom for future equipment, plus a UPS sized to bridge short outages and allow for a graceful shutdown during longer ones.
• Cooling: Server rooms generate continuous heat load that standard office air-conditioning is rarely designed to handle around the clock. A dedicated split or precision cooling unit, sized to the equipment load and running independently of the main office HVAC schedule (which typically shuts down overnight and on weekends), is essential — a room that overheats over a long weekend is a common and entirely avoidable cause of hardware failure.
• Rack space: Plan rack units (U) for servers, switches, patch panels, UPS, and cable management — with spare U capacity for growth, since retrofitting a larger rack later is disruptive.
• Fire suppression and monitoring: Smoke detection appropriate to an equipment room, plus environmental monitoring (temperature/humidity alerts) so a cooling failure is caught before it becomes a hardware failure.
• Cable entry points: Properly sealed and fire-stopped cable entries where risers and containment enter the room, both for safety compliance and to keep dust and pests out of sensitive equipment.

For a 15-25 person office running mostly cloud-hosted applications, a well-built comms cabinet with a switch stack, firewall, a small NAS, UPS and dedicated cooling is often sufficient. Larger offices, or any business with compliance, latency or data-residency reasons to keep servers on-site, should plan a proper server room from day one rather than trying to convert a cabinet later.

Security Systems: CCTV & Access Control Budgeting

Security is one of the areas most frequently under-budgeted in new office setups, partly because it's easy to treat as an afterthought bolted onto the fit-out at the last minute. In practice, CCTV and access control cabling should be planned and pulled alongside the structured cabling first-fix, not retrofitted after walls close.

• Camera placement: Entrances, reception, corridors, car park or loading areas, and — critically — the server/comms room itself, which should always have its own camera coverage and its own access-controlled door.
• IP vs analog: IP cameras running over the structured cabling network (rather than separate coax runs) are now the standard choice for new offices, since they share the same cabling infrastructure and integrate more easily with access control and remote viewing.
• Storage: Decide retention period requirements early (this is sometimes influenced by industry or landlord requirements) since it drives NVR storage sizing.
• Access control: Card, fob or biometric readers at the main entrance and any restricted areas (server room, finance office, stock rooms). Budget for the reader, controller, electric strike or maglock, and the cabling run back to the access control panel.
• Integration: Where possible, run CCTV and access control on a single management platform so security staff or office management aren't juggling two or three separate systems and apps.

As a general market guide (not a fixed quote), typical ranges in Dubai run around AED 800-1,500 per installed IP camera (camera, cabling, share of NVR/storage) and AED 1,500-3,000 per access-controlled door (reader, controller, lock hardware, cabling). Retail, hospitality and healthcare clients often add video analytics and integrate CCTV/access control with building automation for a single dashboard — GC Technologies scopes these systems as part of a wider building and home automation offering, which is worth asking about if you want lighting, HVAC and security managed from one platform.

IP Telephony & Connectivity Setup

Connectivity is usually the single longest lead-time item in the whole IT setup timeline before move-in, which is exactly why it needs to be ordered at the 90-day mark, not the 30-day mark.

• Primary and failover lines: A dedicated business-grade fiber connection as primary, with a secondary connection on a genuinely different path (a second fiber provider, or a 4G/5G/fixed-wireless failover) so a single fault — a cut cable, a provider outage — doesn't take the whole office offline.
• Bandwidth sizing: As a starting point, a 10-20 person office on standard cloud/email/video-call workloads is usually comfortable on 100-200 Mbps; heavier workloads (design, video, large call volumes, hosted ERP) warrant 300 Mbps or more.
• IP telephony (VoIP): Moving to an IP-based phone system, whether hosted or on-premise, means voice traffic rides the same structured cabling and network as data — so voice quality (jitter, latency) depends on proper network design, VLAN segmentation for voice traffic, and Quality of Service (QoS) configuration on the switches.
• Number porting: If you're keeping existing landline or mobile numbers, start the porting request early — it routinely takes longer than the telecom provider's official estimate.
• Firewall and security: A business-grade firewall (not a consumer router) with proper segmentation between guest Wi-Fi, staff network, and server/comms room traffic is a baseline requirement, not an optional extra.

GC Technologies works across servers, networking, IP telephony and connectivity-adjacent infrastructure as part of its core IT solutions offering, which means a single point of accountability for the network design rather than separate vendors for cabling, telephony and Wi-Fi each pointing at each other when something doesn't work.

Setup Phase, Task & Cost Reference

The table below summarizes the phases above into a single reference. Treat the cost column as general market context rather than a quote — actual figures depend heavily on floor plate, existing building infrastructure, and equipment specification. Contact GC Technologies directly for a scoped, site-specific quote.

Setup Phase	Task	Lead Time	Typical Cost Range (AED)
90 days out	Internet circuit order & provisioning	4-8 weeks	1,500-6,000 / month (plan-dependent)
90 days out	Server & networking hardware (Dell/HPE servers, Cisco switches/firewall)	2-6 weeks	15,000-80,000+ (headcount-dependent)
60 days out	Structured cabling first-fix (per data point)	1-3 weeks on-site	250-450 per CAT6 point
60 days out	Comms/server room build-out (power, cooling, rack)	2-4 weeks	20,000-60,000
60 days out	CCTV camera installed (per camera)	1-2 weeks	800-1,500 per camera
60 days out	Access control (per door)	1-2 weeks	1,500-3,000 per door
30 days out	IP telephony setup & number porting	2-4 weeks	300-800 per handset/extension
30 days out	Testing, certification & cutover	3-5 days	Included in scope of works

Common Mistakes That Delay Move-In Day

• Ordering internet too late. Telecom provisioning lead times are outside your control and frequently the longest item on the critical path — start this at 90 days, not 30.
• Treating IT as a "second-fix only" trade. Cabling containment is a first-fix item that needs to be coordinated with electrical works before ceilings close. Bringing in the IT contractor only after the fit-out design is locked removes options and adds cost.
• Undersizing the comms room cooling. Standard office HVAC that shuts off overnight or on weekends is not adequate for equipment that runs continuously — this is one of the most common causes of preventable hardware failure in small offices.
• No failover internet connection. A single connection with no backup path means one fibre cut or provider outage takes the entire office offline with no fallback.
• Skipping cable testing and certification. Untested cabling that "seems to work" on day one can develop intermittent faults that are far more expensive to diagnose after walls and ceilings are closed.
• Forgetting security cabling until after fit-out. CCTV and access control cable runs retrofitted after walls close mean surface-mounted trunking, visible cabling, and a compromised finish.
• Not budgeting for growth. Racks, patch panels, and cabling designed for exactly today's headcount leave no room for the next hire, the next department, or the next piece of equipment.
• Leaving number porting to the last week. Porting existing phone numbers routinely takes longer than the provider's stated estimate — start it alongside the connectivity order, not after.

Frequently Asked Questions