A pharmaceutical distribution business needed to vacate a building housing both its data centre and supply chain operations because the owner was ending the lease. The operational relocation and technology migration depended on the same local technical, business and operational teams. It became clear that the original approach could not complete both moves by the fixed exit deadline.

As Programme Manager, I was responsible for working with senior stakeholders to establish a viable delivery approach, assess the options and their implications, secure approval and lead execution. The priority was to meet the building-exit deadline while retaining the intended migration to the corporate data centres.

I worked with senior stakeholders and my team to assess the available options, including additional resources, a lease extension and alternative migration sequences. We examined dependencies, risks, costs, timescales and operational impacts, including the competing demands on shared teams.

Our recommendation was a two-stage migration: temporarily rehost the applications at another local location, enabling the local team to prioritise readiness of the new supply chain facility, then complete the corporate data centre migration after the building exit.

I drove the recommendation through stakeholder approval and led its execution, coordinating the revised sequence across technology and operational teams.

The building exit completed successfully and on time. The second-stage migration to the corporate data centres completed successfully a few months later.

The approach resolved the immediate resource conflict and enabled both programmes to proceed in an achievable sequence. It met the fixed business deadline while preserving the intended final technology destination.

• programme management
• Data Centre Management
• stakeholder management
• Risk Management

• Accelerated Solution Delivery
• Organisational Agility & Effectiveness

• Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences