We thank Miles & Stockbridge P.C., a leading law firm with offices in Baltimore and the mid-Atlantic region, for entrusting Hoffberger Moving Services LLC with the relocation of their headquarters in Baltimore.  Best of luck in your new location!

Happy first anniversary to New Psalmist Baptist Church!  One year ago, Hoffberger Moving Services LLC had the honor and pleasure of moving the church into their beautiful new home in Baltimore, Maryland. Merry Christmas to the parishioners and staff of New Psalmist Baptist Church from all of us at Hoffberger Moving Services LLC.

Hoffberger Moving Services LLC takes great pride in operating as a small, certified, woman-owned business, even as our commercial moving projects continue to grow in size and number.

That’s why Margaret Hoffberger, owner and managing member, recently jumped at the chance to participate in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2011 Emerging 200 Initiative (e200): Street Wise Steps to Small Business Growth.

The e200 Initiative provides intensive, executive-level training for high potential small business owners. The 2011 progream was limited to only 15 businesses in Baltimore City and Baltimore County and approximately 330 businesses nationwide.

From April until October, Margaret completed more than 100 hours of class time, focusing on topics such as organization management, growth strategies, finances, market development, and strategic planning. The class included “real life” strategy sessions with local and national business leaders, and it culminated with each participant presenting a three-year strategic growth action plan about the future of his or her business.

Since the e200 program started in 2008, more than half of participating businesses have increased their revenue, and nearly two-thirds have created new jobs, according to the Small Business Administration (SBA). Business owners who have completed the training have also secured more than $9 million in new financing, the SBA says.

Here’s hoping for similar success for Hoffberger and our fellow e200 graduates in 2012.

Hoffberger Moving Services LLC recently had the privilege of helping The United States Army Heritage Museum (AHM) in Carlisle, PA move into its new, 34,000 square-foot Museum Support Facility.

The Museum is a fascinating place that houses the art and artifacts of the U.S. Army and tells the stories of the brave men and women who have served at home and abroad.

The newly constructed Support Facility acts as a sort of intake center where important artifacts are cataloged and preserved so they can be studied or featured in future exhibits. Hoffberger’s role was to receive the facility’s equipment at our warehouse and then deliver and install it.

The Moving project involved furniture and sophisticated preservation equipment to be used in the facility’s Paper Conservation Laboratory, Digitization Laboratory, Object Conservation Laboratory, Textile/Art Conservation Laboratory, Analytical Laboratory as well as artifact storage and processing areas.

We successfully completed the move during a two-week period in mid-September.

If you’ve never been to the museum, it’s well worth the easy, two-hour drive from Baltimore to Carlisle.

Relocating a hospital requires an experienced team of movers.

Hoffberger has developed long-term relationships with many hospitals in the Baltimore-Washington area, and now Saint Agnes Hospital has entrusted us with their most precious asset; their patients.

Last weekend, Hoffberger assisted the doctor/nurse move teams in relocating patients to Saint Agnes Hospital’s new 200,000 square foot south tower. With military precision, three patients at a time were readied for the move by the nurses while the Hoffberger team prepared their personal belongings and equipment for relocation. Together, the two teams transported patients (many connected to IV lines) in hospital beds with their belongings from the old hospital into elevators and down long halls emerging into the beautiful new private rooms designed by doctors and nurses for improved privacy and patient safety.

When it comes to moving hospitals, experience counts. We are proud to have been part of the team at the Saint Agnes Hospital move, and we wish them great success in their new tower.

Moving a large law firm is like moving a library, offices and classified government documents – all at once.

Hoffberger has vast experience with all of these types of moves, which we believe gives us the unique ability to provide exceptional services for legal clients.

In March, we had the opportunity to move the law firm of Ober|Kaler, including all existing furniture and equipment, to its new Baltimore office in the 100 Light Street tower. The firm has 230 Baltimore employees, who now occupy nearly 95,000-square-feet in what was formerly known as the Legg Mason building.

We were able to move shelving and some files in advance. However, the bulk of the move was completed in two weekends, starting on Friday night and continuing through the night and through Saturday, to avoid disrupting normal business hours. Like all of our law office moves, it required incredible precision and attention to details.

• The legal library, all file rooms, and war rooms had to be packed and unpacked without moving a single volume out of place.

• Thousands of confidential, legal-sized files had to be packed and moved in correct order. In some cases, we had to interfile – combine files, in order, from multiple locations in the old building to a single location in the new building.

• Computers, furniture, and other office equipment were transferred to the 35-story building, the city’s tallest. In all, we disconnected and reconnected more than 200 computers.

Click here for more information about Ober|Kaler’s recent move.

We wish Ober|Kaler continued success in its new location.

“What do we do with all of the stuff we don’t need anymore?”

If you are planning a commercial moving project, you should answer that question sooner rather than later. If you wait too long, you are often left with only one choice of what to do with unused furniture or equipment: Throw it in a dumpster.

Yet, with some early planning, we find that many of these items can be donated, reused or recycled. This is not only good for the planet, but recycling helps reduce overall waste volume, which could lead to cost savings during a move.

At Hoffberger, we offer the following recycling guidelines and services for all of our government, corporate and non-profit moving clients:

• Furniture: We encourage donating unused furniture to non- profit and charitable organizations, possibly resulting in a favorable tax outcome. We can also put clients in touch with used furniture dealers or auctioneers. In some cases, auctions can even be held online to minimize the impact on your operations.

• Paper and cardboard: When cleaning out files and paper, we offer documentation destruction for sensitive materials, and we provide a certificate of destruction to protect the security of the company. Shredded paper and cardboard boxes can then be recycled.

• Pallets and work surfaces: Wood pallets can easily be reused or taken to a processor who will grind them into wood fiber for other products. When workstations are being discarded, work surfaces can often be removed and ground into wood fiber as well.

• Scrap metal: Metal filing cabinets and other metal pieces (in the steel or aluminum frame of fabric-covered partitions, for example) can be recycled as scrap metal.

• Electronics: We use a specialist to dismantle and recycle electronics, which helps keep hazardous materials out of landfills. When concerns arise for the security of critical data, we work with firms that destroy hard drives and other data storage devices prior to recycling the component parts.

• Data and telecom wiring: These cables can be recycled for the copper and other valuable metals they contain.

• Plastics, Styrofoam, general trash and construction debris: We help and encourage clients to recycle these products.

Click here for more information about Hoffberger’s sustainability efforts.

Hoffberger Moving Services is well known and respected for its expertise in commercial moving for government offices, hospitals, research facilities, warehouse facilities, libraries and museums.

However, we sometimes get the opportunity to take on relocation projects outside the norm. I think we, as well as our clients, benefit greatly from the experience.

Such was the case when we recently had the privilege of helping New Psalmist Baptist Church in Baltimore, Maryland, move to its new campus in the city’s Seton Business Park. The 7,000-member congregation has built a spectacular worship center, affectionately called The Holy City of Zion, which includes a 4,000-seat sanctuary and 175,000 square feet of ministry space.

Our job for three days in mid-October was to move everything – offices, classrooms and the sanctuary – from New Psalmist’s former complex on Old Frederick Road in Baltimore to the new campus. A church is like a second home for its members, and we approached this move as if we were moving a treasured collection of personal belongings.

We carefully moved items ranging from religious artifacts to organs, drums and other delicate instruments that support the church’s world-renowned choir. Because of New Psalmist’s wide following, its services are televised each week, so we also had to move cameras and other sensitive broadcast equipment.

The really fun part of this move was we had the opportunity to work with and interact with literally dozens of volunteers from the congregation. (Very often, we work mostly alone, at night, as to not interrupt our clients’ business operations.) The congregation’s effort and enthusiasm were nothing short of inspiring.

This holiday season, we’d like to wish all the members of New Psalmist Baptist Church continued blessings in their new home!

We learn a lot about an organization when we help it move.

We’re not just talking about its equipment, furniture and supplies. We learn about everything from how its work environment operates to how it uses space to maximize productivity. Most importantly, we learn about where that organization is heading – literally and figuratively – in the future.

That’s why at Hoffberger, we take a lot pride in developing long-term relationships with our commercial moving clients. The better we get to know a client, the more we can help ensure each moving project is as safe and hassle-free as possible.

One of our longest working relationships has been with Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Hoffberger has been working with Hopkins for as long as we’ve been an independent company, and several of our senior managers have been helping Hopkins with moves for nearly two decades.

The university and hospital are world-class organizations, right in our backyard, and we are honored they view us as their preferred commercial relocation company. Working with them has also sharpened the expertise we can bring to moving clients in the healthcare, education and life sciences fields.

Some examples of moving projects we’ve completed for Hopkins include:

• Johns Hopkins University, Carey Business School. We relocated 77,000 square feet of classrooms and offices in a single night.
• Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Over the years, we have relocated more than 1 million square feet of research facilities.
• Johns Hopkins Hospital, Pediatric Medical Outpatient Building. We moved the pediatrics group into a 100,000-square-foot new facility in one weekend.
• Johns Hopkins University, Mt. Washington Campus. This project included approximately 250,000 square feet of various groups and departments.
• The Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins. We moved the Institute from its old building into a new, 240,000 square-foot building, including clinical and research space. The new building was designed by the renowned architectural firm Ayers Saint Gross.

Few things in the moving business require more precision than a library move.

Every single volume has to be meticulously packed, shipped and unloaded in the correct order – shelf by shelf. If even a single row of books is moved out of place, it could knock an entire collection out of order. That could delay a library opening by several days!

In short, hiring an experienced library moving company matters.

Over the years, Hoffberger Moving Services has developed a reputation as one of the most trusted library movers in the Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia region. We have experience with libraries ranging from 2-million volume university collections to personal studies.

We know how important books are to our clients, and we’ll take any measures necessary to protect them. We have moved rare, priceless and out-of-print books that required white-glove handling and specially made protective containers. For all library relocations, our movers use our own, custom-built moving carts that are packed and sealed in protective shrink wrap.

In fact, during our most recent library move, a 50,000-volume collection at The Library of the U.S. National Arboretum, Washington, D.C., we:

• Cleaned each book prior to packing with a gentle vacuum.
• Combined collections from multiple locations to one location on the new shelves, a process known as “interfiling.”

What’s more, Hoffberger can also offer climate-controlled warehouse space for books that need to be stored for any period of time.

Some of our current and past library clients include:

• The Edward Rhodes Stitt Library of the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland. We packed and moved the 50,000-volume collection and dismantled and rebuilt all shelving.
• Washington County Free Library System Headquarters, Hagerstown, MD. We will pack 250,000 volumes, including rare books, and dismantle and rebuild 1,100 sections of shelving. (Scheduled for November).
• US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Library, Washington, D.C. We will move 60,000 volumes in four stages to minimize disruptions. (Scheduled for later this year.)
• Johns Hopkins University Library Service Center, Baltimore, Maryland. At 2 million volumes, this has been our largest library move to date.
• Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, West Virginia. We moved 450,000 volumes – Shepherd’s entire library – into another building. Then, we moved them again a year later to spread the collections between the new and the newly renovated original building.