# How to Switch IT Provider Without Disrupting Live Projects > Canonical: https://wit-support.uk/insights/how-to-switch-it-provider-without-disrupting-live-projects Managed IT 6 November 2026 # How to Switch IT Provider Without Disrupting Live Projects You can switch IT provider without disrupting live projects if you do it in the right order: secure administrative ownership first, document the estate, verify backups, then switch over on an evening or weekend chosen around your project calendar. Most of the work is preparation. The risk is rarely the switch-over itself; it is what nobody wrote down. By Yvan Bamping, CEO, Workshop IT Short answer: You can switch IT provider without disrupting live projects if you do it in the right order: secure administrative ownership first, document the estate, verify backups, then switch over on an evening or weekend chosen around your project calendar. Most of the work is preparation. The risk is rarely the switch-over itself; it is what nobody wrote down. Most practices put off changing IT provider for the same reason: there is always a deadline close. The worry is reasonable. A design practice cannot afford a week where central models will not open or email goes quiet before a submission. Staying with a provider that is not working carries its own risk though and that risk compounds. Done in the right order, a switch is close to invisible to the people doing the design work. Moving practices across from another provider is most of the onboarding work we do. This is the sequence we follow and the one we would recommend whoever you choose. ## When is the right time to switch IT provider? Start with three dates: the end of your notice period, your next major submissions and any renewal that would lock you in for another year, such as Microsoft 365 annual commitments, connectivity contracts or backup subscriptions. Plan backwards from them. For most design practices, a well-run transition usually takes a few weeks from decision to switch-over and most of that time is preparation rather than downtime. The switch-over itself is usually a single evening or weekend. Avoid switching over in submission week, at your financial year end or in the fortnight before an office move. If the current service is failing badly the timetable can be compressed, but that should be a deliberate decision rather than an accident. ## What should you secure before you give notice? The most common problem in a provider change is administrative ownership. If the outgoing provider holds the only global administrator account for your Microsoft 365 tenant, or registered your domain in its own name, you depend on its goodwill on the day you need it most. Check these before you serve notice, not after. The National Cyber Security Centre’s guidance on choosing a managed service provider makes the same point from the other side: your contract should say what happens when you end or change it and a provider’s access should be removed when the job is done. Read your current contract’s exit terms now, so there are no surprises later. ## What does a good transition plan look like? A good incoming provider documents your estate before it changes anything. Expect four phases. - Discovery. An audit of devices, accounts, licences, backups and applications, including where your Revit central models live and which machines run rendering or analysis. The output is a written list of risks, not a sales proposal. - Preparation. Monitoring and security tools installed alongside the existing ones, a test restore of real project data and a switch-over plan agreed with a named contact in the practice. - Switch-over. Administrative passwords changed, the outgoing provider’s remote access removed and the new support desk live, all on an evening or weekend you have chosen. - Stabilisation. Someone on hand on the first working day, then close attention to whatever people raise in the first few weeks, until support settles into its normal rhythm. Your incoming provider should also deal with the outgoing one directly: requesting access and documentation, agreeing the handover date and chasing anything that is missing, so your team is not caught in the middle. WIT handles that liaison in full as part of every onboarding. ## How do you keep live projects running during the switch-over? Treat project data as the thing to protect and everything else as secondary. In practice that means a few simple rules. - Freeze non-essential changes for a week either side of the switch-over. A provider switch is not the moment to upgrade Revit or move a file server. - Confirm central model locations and worksharing settings before anyone touches the network or storage. - Restore a real project folder from backup before the switch-over and check it opens, rather than trusting a green tick. We explain why in backup vs business continuity . - Tell staff what will change, when and who to call. Usually that is a new support email address and phone number and very little else. - Keep the project calendar in front of the engineers, so anyone working on your systems knows which teams have issues due that week. ## What should you check after the switch? Much of the risk in a provider change sits in the weeks after the switch-over, when old access can quietly remain in place. In the first month, confirm that: - the outgoing provider’s administrator accounts, remote access tools and delegated admin relationships in Microsoft 365 have been removed - applications granted access to your tenant have been reviewed and anything nobody can explain has gone - every user has multi-factor authentication and every backup job has run and been checked - licences match the people who are still with the practice A specialist provider will also check that Revit, rendering and analysis tools behave as they did before, not just that email works. That is where a generalist switch most often goes wrong in a design practice. ## Choosing who you switch to Ask every provider on your shortlist for its onboarding plan in writing. Our buyer’s checklist for choosing an IT provider has the other questions worth asking. If you already have an internal IT person, look for a provider that will work alongside them; see co-managed IT . WIT has worked almost exclusively with architecture, engineering and construction practices since 2013 and has been certified to ISO 27001 since 2018 and to ISO 9001 since 2023. Our engineers work from Mint House in Southwark, close to practices in Southwark and London Bridge and Clerkenwell and Farringdon . If you are weighing up a change, see how our managed IT support works, read about IT support for architects in London or book an AEC IT review . ## Frequently asked questions ### Can we change IT provider in the middle of a live project? Yes. Almost every practice has a live project, so waiting for a quiet period rarely works. Schedule the switch-over around submission dates, freeze non-essential changes either side of it and verify backups of active project data before anything moves. ### Who should own the Microsoft 365 global administrator account? The practice should. Your IT provider will need administrative access of its own, ideally through delegated access you can see and remove. At least one global administrator account should still belong to the practice, protected with multi-factor authentication and kept where a director can reach it. ### What should our current IT provider hand over? Administrative access to Microsoft 365, the domain registrar, DNS, network equipment and any servers, a list of licences with renewal dates, backup locations and retention, plus any network or system documentation. Your contract’s exit terms set out what the provider is obliged to give you. ### Will our staff notice the change? They should notice a new support contact and an engineer asking questions for the first few days. They should not notice lost files, broken shortcuts or a Monday morning where nothing works. If they do, the transition was rushed. ## Let’s make technology work better for your practice Tell us about your current setup, challenges and future plans. We will help you identify the right next steps.