Everything a New 100-Desk Office Actually Needs: A Hong Kong IT Build-Out Checklist

Almost everything in an office IT build-out takes longer to arrive than the fit-out takes to finish. For a new 100-desk Hong Kong office, the order matters more than the checklist: internet circuits and cabling decide your move-in date, hardware decides your budget, and nearly everything else can be recovered if it slips.

The scenario: lease signed, handover date fixed, 100 desks, no IT team

Picture an operations or HR lead at a professional-services firm. The lease on a new Hong Kong floor is signed. The landlord's fit-out schedule has a handover date on it, the old lease is running out on a date that will not move, and the plan is 100 desks, a handful of meeting rooms, a pantry and a small server or comms cupboard that the architect has drawn as a box labelled "IT". Nobody on the team has ever built an office before, and nobody works in IT. The company has been running on cloud tools and a few laptops that people bought themselves, and until this month that was fine.

This is an illustrative composite scenario, not a named client. It is assembled from the shape of a build that repeats across small and mid-sized Hong Kong firms: a fixed date, a landlord's rules, a contractor who is responsible for everything up to the ceiling tiles and not much beyond, and a buyer who suddenly needs to know what "IT" means in a floor plan.

It is also a different problem from the two stories most often told about office moves. If you are leaving an existing office and need to keep systems running while you go, that is a relocation, and there is a separate story about a Hong Kong telecom and media company moving without stopping. Here there is no old site to run in parallel and no existing network to copy. Everything is new, which is both the opportunity and the risk.

The sequence in this article is written around Hong Kong: landlord-managed buildings, risers and building management offices, and fit-out approvals. The same order of work travels to a new office in Singapore, Tokyo or most other Asian cities. Only the names of the approving bodies change.

One piece of framing before the detail. Every item in an IT build-out falls into one of three groups. Some have lead times that are longer than the fit-out, and those decide your date. Some are expensive, and those decide your budget. Everything else is fast, cheap to fix and forgiving of mistakes. Most build-outs go wrong because the buyer spends the first month on the third group.

Which IT items set the critical path in a new office?

The critical path in an office build is not the desk hardware. It is anything that depends on someone else's calendar. Four items usually sit there: internet circuits, structured cabling and containment, comms room power and cooling, and access-point procurement. Each needs a decision earlier than feels natural.

Lead times below are hedged on purpose. They vary by carrier, building and season, and every one of them must be confirmed at the time you order. Treat them as the reason to start early, not as a promise.

Internet circuits, and why diversity is a design decision

A new business circuit into a Hong Kong building often involves the carrier, the landlord or building management, and sometimes a site survey before anyone commits to a date. Commonly four to eight weeks is quoted for a new business circuit, and it can be longer where the building needs new entry work. Confirm at order, and ask what would move the date.

Two decisions belong to you, not to the carrier. The first is bandwidth, which is easy to change later and should not hold up the order. The second is diversity: whether you want two circuits from two different carriers, entering the building by physically separate routes where the building allows it. A second circuit from the same carrier down the same duct gives you a second bill and much less resilience than it appears to. If a single outage would stop 100 people working, diversity is worth asking about early, because a second entry route depends on the building and is not something you can decide in the last week.

Ask the landlord's building management office two questions in the first week: which carriers already have a presence in the building, and what approvals or lead time apply for a new carrier or a second route. The answers shape everything else on this list.

Structured cabling and containment

Cabling is the item most often left until the fit-out is already under way, and it has the least room to slip. Cable has to go in before the ceiling closes and before the floor and partition work covers the routes. If cabling is late, either the ceiling waits or the cable goes in as a compromise.

The other half of this item is containment: the trays, trunking and pathways that carry the cable. Containment is usually part of the fit-out drawings, and it is easy for it to be sized for the cables of an earlier plan. A new office with 100 desks, access points, cameras, door controllers and meeting-room panels has considerably more cable than a floor plan suggests. Have the pathways checked against the cable count, with spare capacity, before they are built.

Comms room power and cooling

The box labelled "IT" on the plan needs a decision about power and cooling before the fit-out contractor finishes the electrical design. Ask what electrical supply it gets, whether it sits on a dedicated circuit, whether a small UPS will be fitted, and how it is cooled. Building air conditioning in many commercial towers follows the landlord's operating hours, and a cupboard full of network equipment that overheats at night or on a public holiday is a common, avoidable fault. A dedicated cooling solution for the room is often worth the extra line in the fit-out budget. Confirm what the building allows.

Do you need a comms room at all? For 100 desks, yes, in some form: a lockable, ventilated space where the switches, patch panels, firewall and any local equipment can sit together, out of reach of the pantry and the cleaners. It does not have to be large. It has to be planned, because a rack that has to be squeezed into a stationery cupboard after the fact rarely gets adequate power or cooling.

Access-point procurement

Wi-Fi hardware is not usually the longest lead-time item, but it is the one most often ordered before anyone has decided how many are needed and where they go. That decision belongs to a site survey, not to a rule of thumb. Ordering access points late is a supply risk. Ordering them early on a guess is a design risk. The next section explains why the design has to come first.

If you are working against a fixed handover date, the practical rule is simple. Put circuits and cabling on the schedule in the first week, comms room power and cooling in the second, and let everything on the desk layer follow. If an item in the critical group slips, the date slips. If an item in the third group slips, someone borrows a screen for a day.

What does the network fabric need: cabling, switches and Wi-Fi?

The fabric is what everything else plugs into. It is the least visible part of the office and the most expensive to change once the ceilings are closed, so it rewards being designed carefully once.

Cabling standard, patch panels and labelling

Choose a current, certified copper cabling standard that is comfortable with high-speed and power-over-Ethernet devices, rather than the cheapest option that meets today's needs. Use fibre between the comms room and any remote closet where distances or floor layout call for it. Ask that every run is tested and that the test results are delivered as a record. Brocent's structured cabling work is tested with Fluke test equipment, and whoever installs yours should be able to show you the results for every run.

Decide the labelling scheme before the first cable is pulled. A good scheme is boring and consistent: every outlet, patch-panel port and switch port carries a matching identifier, so that a fault report reading "outlet 3-14 is dead" can be traced in a minute. A bad scheme is invented on the day, differs by floor and is documented nowhere. Labels are cheap to plan and painful to retrofit into hundreds of ports.

Commonly two data points per desk position is the design starting point, with extra drops for printers, meeting rooms, the reception area, access points, cameras and door controllers. Cabling is also where you pay for mounting, so agree who fixes monitors, wall-mounted TVs and cameras to the walls, and to what standard. This is part of Brocent's cabling scope, which includes mounting of monitors, surveillance cameras and TVs.

Switch count and PoE budget

Count the wired devices first. Desk outlets, printers, access points, cameras, door controllers and meeting-room panels all land on a switch port. Add growth and spare capacity. Then separate the ones that draw power through the cable, because those set the power-over-Ethernet budget.

The budget is a sum. Add up what each powered device is likely to draw, add headroom, and check that the switches you choose can supply it across all ports at once rather than only on a datasheet's best day. A switch with the right number of ports and too small a PoE budget will run the first fifty access points and cameras and then start switching devices off. Selection criteria, not model names: enough ports with spare, an adequate total PoE budget, redundant power if the office cannot tolerate an outage, and management features that let someone monitor the whole estate from one place.

Wi-Fi design for more people than desks

A common planning error is to size the wireless network for the number of desks. In a 100-desk office, the number of people connecting is usually higher: part-timers and hot-desk users, visitors, contractors, people sitting in meeting rooms and the pantry, and everybody's phone. A working assumption of roughly 120 people on Wi-Fi for a 100-desk office is a reasonable starting point for planning, and every one of those people carries at least a laptop and a phone.

How many access points that means is not a number to guess. It is decided by a site survey that looks at capacity, walls, glass, density and the layout of the space. If anyone offers you a fixed count without one, ask what it is based on. Brocent's wireless site survey service uses professional survey tools for exactly this reason, and it can be done from plans before the floor is built and repeated after the space is furnished. For an example of how a wireless design plays out in a serviced-office setting, there is a published case on managed wireless in a Hong Kong serviced office.

Design separate networks for staff, guests and devices such as printers and room panels, with guest access that cannot reach company systems. That is a configuration decision, and it is easier to make on day one than after the office has started using a single shared network.

What about security and access: door control, CCTV and the day-one credentials?

Physical security is part of the IT design, not an add-on after it. The reason is practical: door controllers, card readers and cameras all need cabling, network ports, power and often a management server. If they are specified separately by the fit-out contractor, you tend to discover the gaps during commissioning.

Door access control

Who installs door access? Usually a specialist installer coordinated with the fit-out contractor, and often with the landlord's building management where the main entrance or lift lobby is shared. What matters is who owns the system afterwards. Decide before installation who can add and remove cards, who holds the administrator login, how leavers are deprovisioned, and whether the system is tied to your staff directory or is a spreadsheet someone keeps. Brocent includes door access control and office CCTV in its IT design, so that the cabling, network and power for both are planned with everything else.

CCTV over entrances and the comms room

Place cameras where they answer a real question: the entrance, any reception desk, and the comms room door. The comms room matters more than it looks, because it is the one small space where a stranger with a key card can do the most damage in the least time. Decide how long footage is kept and who can view it. Hong Kong's privacy regulator has published guidance on CCTV monitoring, and it is worth reading before deciding camera positions and signage.

Who holds the credentials on day one

By the end of handover week, a surprising number of important logins exist: the internet carrier account, the firewall and switch management, the Wi-Fi controller, the door access administrator, the CCTV recorder, the domain registrar and the cloud tenant. In a new build, these are usually created by whichever contractor or vendor happened to install the item. That is the moment to make the company, not a vendor and not an individual, the owner of every one of them.

Do it as a simple register with three columns: what the login is, who at the company owns it, and where the recovery details are kept. Store it somewhere the company controls, with two people who can reach it. When the contractors leave, you should not have to write to them to get into your own firewall.

The desk layer: laptops, monitors, docks, printing and issuing 100 machines in two days

The desk layer is where the budget goes, and it is also where the build is most recoverable. A late monitor is an inconvenience. A missing circuit is a stoppage.

Devices, docking and monitors

Count devices honestly: one per person, plus a small pool of spares, plus a few loan devices for visitors and new starters in the first months. Decide whether the fleet is Windows, Mac or a mix, because many companies now have both, and the support model, the enrolment method and the security policy all need to cover each. In a mixed fleet, standardise the parts that do not need to differ: the same dock connection, the same monitor size, the same headset policy. Every extra variation is a difference someone has to remember.

At each desk, a docking station and one or two monitors turn a laptop into a workstation. Decide whether desks are assigned or shared, because hot-desking changes how many docks and monitors you need, and how people are logged in when they sit down. Ask who is mounting the screens: monitor arms need a fixing point and cable route decided during the fit-out, not on move-in day.

Printing

Resist buying a printer for every team. A small number of shared multifunction devices with secure release, placed where people already walk, is easier to support and less wasteful than a fleet of small printers. Put each one on a wired connection, give each a labelled outlet, and decide who orders supplies before the first empty tray.

The build process that lets 100 machines be issued in two days

Issuing 100 machines in two days is possible only if the machines arrive already built. The alternative, a team unboxing and setting up 100 laptops by hand on the floor, takes weeks and gives you 100 slightly different configurations.

The working method is to stage everything before delivery. Devices are enrolled into a central management platform, given the standard software and security settings, assigned to a named person, labelled and packed by desk. On the day, the person receives a device that signs in with their company account and finds their applications waiting. Brocent's IT infrastructure deployment service works this way with an offsite staging centre, where equipment is pre-configured and tested before it goes to site, followed by on-site installation and user acceptance testing, and as-built documentation with photo sign-off.

To make the two days real, agree a handout process in advance: a list of names, desks and devices; a table set up near the entrance; a fixed slot per person; and one person recording which devices have gone where. It is unglamorous, and it is what makes 100 people productive by the same afternoon.

Meeting rooms: decide the platform before you buy the room

The single most common mistake in a new office's meeting rooms is buying the hardware before deciding the meeting platform. Room systems, cameras and controllers are built around a particular platform or certified to work with it. Choose rooms first and you can end up with kit that is awkward with the platform your company actually uses, or locked out of the features you assumed.

So the order is: decide which platform the company uses for calls and meetings, decide how many room types you need (a small huddle room, a standard meeting room, a larger boardroom), then choose one standard kit per room type. Each room type is designed once and repeated. Having six rooms with six different setups is how a company ends up with a help desk full of "how do I share my screen in this room".

For each room type, think in layers:

• Display. Sized to the room and the seating distance, fixed to the wall with a cable route planned in advance rather than on a trolley.
• Camera and audio. A camera that frames the whole table and a microphone and speaker arrangement matched to the room's size and acoustics. Audio is what people notice first when it is wrong.
• Controller or one-touch join. A panel or button that starts the meeting without a remote and a cable adaptor.
• Booking tablet. A small panel outside the door that shows whether a room is free, tied to the shared calendar.
• Network and power. A wired network connection and power at the right points, which have to be in the cabling design.

Brocent designs audio-visual and meeting-room systems, including video conferencing and digital signage, as part of the same IT design as the cabling. If phones are on the list too, Brocent's cloud telephone system integrates with Microsoft Teams, which is worth knowing if that is your meeting platform.

Identity, mail and files: what has to exist before anyone can log in

A finished office where nobody can sign in is still not an office. Identity is the layer that makes everything else usable, and it depends on things that take calendar time even when the technology is quick.

Before any staff device is built, someone has to have decided or created the following:

• Company domain and DNS. Who owns the domain, who can change its records, and where it is registered. If email is already on that domain today, plan carefully so nothing is interrupted.
• The company's cloud tenant. The productivity suite that holds mail, calendar and files, with an administrator account owned by the company.
• A user directory. One account per person, in groups that reflect teams and access rights, so that file permissions follow the group and not the individual.
• Multi-factor authentication and sign-in rules. Set before the first login, because it is far harder to introduce after the office is running.
• File storage structure. Where the company's shared files live, who can reach which folders, and how an existing set of files gets there.
• Device management policy. The rules that staged laptops pick up when they enrol: encryption, updates, screen lock and remote wipe.
• Wi-Fi sign-in. Whether staff connect with their own credentials or a shared password, decided with the Wi-Fi design.

If any of these are not ready when devices are staged, the devices go on the floor half-configured, and each one has to be revisited by hand. Get identity right early and every later step is faster. Get it wrong and every desk is a small project.

The two weeks before and the two weeks after handover, in order

Everything above becomes a sequence at this point. The dates in a real project vary, and the point of walking through it is the order of dependencies rather than the calendar. Here handover means the day the finished space is handed to you for move-in.

The two weeks before handover

• Circuits live and tested. The internet circuits should be installed and tested before handover, not on it. If they are not, that is the moment to activate a fallback plan, such as temporary connectivity, and to escalate with the carrier.
• Cabling certified. Test results are collected, any failed runs are fixed and re-tested, and the labelling is checked against the drawings.
• Comms room commissioned. Racks, patch panels and switches are installed, powered and cooled, and the firewall is configured. The equipment is running and being monitored before anyone moves in.
• Access points mounted and surveyed. They are mounted in the positions the design calls for, and the Wi-Fi is tested against the design, ideally with a check in the finished space.
• Security systems working. Door access and CCTV are commissioned, the administrators are defined, and the credentials register is filled in.
• Identity live. Accounts exist, multi-factor authentication is set, and staged devices are ready to be built to the standard.
• Devices staged and labelled. The whole fleet is configured, tested and packed by desk, ready to be delivered on the day the space is available.
• Meeting rooms tested. Each room type is checked with a real call, from the screen to the audio to the join button.

The two weeks after handover

• Days one and two: issue the devices. Machines are handed out on the plan agreed in advance, and people sign in with their own accounts. Every problem is logged in one place rather than fixed quietly.
• Days three to five: the first-week fixes. The list of small faults that appear in any new space gets worked through: a dead outlet, a monitor that needs an arm, a room that does not join, an access point that needs moving. Expect a list, and expect it to be short if the earlier steps went well.
• Week two: tune and document. Wi-Fi is re-checked with the office full of people, since a full office behaves differently from an empty one. Printing, guest access and the meeting rooms get a second look. The as-built documentation, test results and credentials register are finalised and handed over.
• End of week two: a review. Sit down with the list of what happened, decide what changes for the next stage, and confirm who is supporting the office from now on.

None of this needs to be dramatic. What makes it calm is that the long-lead items were ordered first and the checks happen before people are in the space.

Buy, manage or subscribe: which layers belong in which column?

Three layers of a new office can be bought either as an asset or as a service: network hardware, end-user devices and meeting rooms. Each can be bought and owned, bought and managed by someone else, or subscribed to. The right answer differs by layer.

Buy and own

You purchase the equipment and take responsibility for keeping it running, updating it and replacing it.

• Network hardware: Lowest running cost over a long life and full control. It only works if someone in the company, or a partner, owns the firmware, monitoring and warranty administration. Without that, it is an unmanaged asset.
• End-user devices: Suits a company that wants complete control and has the capacity to handle repairs, spares and refresh cycles. In a firm with no IT team, the hidden costs are the time people spend fixing their own machines.
• Meeting rooms: Sensible for a small number of standard rooms with a stable platform. Risky if the platform choice is uncertain, because the hardware is not easily reused.

Buy and have it managed

You own the equipment, and a provider monitors, patches and supports it under an agreement.

• Network hardware: A common fit for a firm with no IT team. You keep the asset, and the operational work of firmware, monitoring, faults and carrier liaison sits with someone else. Ask for a defined response time and for the configuration to be documented so that you are never locked in.
• End-user devices: Works well when the fleet is standardised and enrolled into central management. The provider handles patching, security policy and new-starter builds, and you decide the hardware.
• Meeting rooms: Useful for keeping room systems healthy and updated across the platform's releases, which is what commonly breaks a room after it has worked well for months.

Subscribe

You pay a recurring fee that includes the hardware, its replacement and the support, and you return or replace it at the end of the term.

• Network hardware: Attractive when you want predictable cost and do not want to think about refresh cycles, though you should read the terms on what happens at the end of the term and on early exit.
• End-user devices: Attractive for a growing company where headcount changes and hardware refresh would otherwise arrive as a lump. Check what happens to devices when someone leaves and what condition rules apply on return.
• Meeting rooms: Attractive where the platform may change or the room count is uncertain, because the commitment is shorter than a purchase. Compare the total across the full term with owning and managing before deciding.

Where the three columns usually land

For a 100-desk office with no IT team, a common pattern is to own the cabling, which is part of the building and outlives everything else, and to buy the network equipment and have it managed. End-user devices can go either way, depending on how much the company wants a single monthly figure. Meeting rooms are where a subscription earns its place, because the platform is the most likely thing to change.

The bridge to a running service is simple. Whichever way each layer is bought, someone has to answer the call when a laptop will not sign in, a room will not join or the Wi-Fi is slow in one corner. A per-user managed IT plan covers that ongoing work for each person in the office, so the build-out ends with a support arrangement and not with a stack of equipment nobody is responsible for. Brocent's office IT setup service includes ongoing support after the build, including a 24×7 help desk. If you want to see how the pieces are priced before you decide, the pricing page is the place to start.

Frequently asked questions

How early should IT be involved in a new office?

Before the fit-out drawings are finalised. That is when circuits, containment, comms room power and cooling, and cable routes can still be changed at the cost of a drawing revision, not a ceiling being opened up. If you are already past that point, the same rule holds in a smaller form: settle the long-lead items first, and use whatever time is left for the rest. Brocent's office IT setup service starts with a consultant visit to the current and new office to design the infrastructure.

What are the longest lead times in an office IT build?

Usually the internet circuits, followed by the cabling and containment, which have to be done inside the fit-out schedule. Comms room power and cooling are decided early because they are built into the electrical and air-conditioning design. Circuit lead times are often several weeks and commonly four to eight weeks for a new business circuit, but they vary by carrier and building, so confirm at order.

How many access points do we need for 120 Wi-Fi users?

There is no honest number without a site survey. The count depends on capacity, the type and position of walls and glass, how densely people sit and where the meeting rooms are. Plan for more Wi-Fi users than desks, and let a survey decide the count and positions before you order.

Do we need a comms room?

For 100 desks, yes, in some form. You need a lockable, ventilated space with dedicated power and adequate cooling for the switches, patch panels and firewall. It does not need to be large, but it does need to be planned during the fit-out, not squeezed into a cupboard afterwards.

Who installs door access control?

Usually a specialist installer working with the fit-out contractor, and with the landlord's building management where the entrance is shared. The important decisions are on your side: who owns the administrator login, how leavers are removed and how the system ties to your staff list. Including door access in the overall IT design keeps the cabling and network ports from being missed.

Can we move in with temporary internet?

It is possible, and it is worth having as a fallback, but it is a plan B and not a plan. Temporary connectivity is generally slower, less resilient and awkward to change over from once the permanent circuits are installed. Ask the carrier what temporary options exist in your building, and treat a delayed circuit as a reason to escalate early.

Should we buy or lease hardware?

It depends on the layer. Cabling is a long-life asset and is normally bought as part of the build. For network equipment, end-user devices and meeting rooms, compare owning, owning with management and subscribing across the full term, including the support effort, and choose per layer instead of one answer for everything.

What does day-one support look like?

For the first days, people who know the build should be on the floor while devices are issued and the first faults are logged in one place. After that, support moves to a normal help desk model with a named channel, response targets and documentation of what was built. Brocent's office IT setup service includes ongoing support after setup, including a 24×7 help desk.

Before you sign off the fit-out

A new office is a chain of dependencies, and the ones that hold the date are the ones you cannot see from the floor plan. If you take one thing from this checklist, take the order: circuits and cabling first, then the comms room, then the desk layer, then the meeting rooms, with identity and the credentials register running alongside all of them. Everything after the long-lead items can be recovered.

Brocent was founded in Beijing in 2007, has had a Hong Kong office since 2016 and has been headquartered globally in Singapore since 2021, and its office IT setup work has covered more than 120 completed office setups. Fixed-price quotations are part of how that work is scoped.

If you are planning a new floor and want a second pair of eyes on the sequence before the fit-out drawings are locked, talk to us about the build-out, or read about our per-user managed IT plan to see how the support side works once you are in.