Skip to content
Request an assessment
The angular corner of the WesternTechSystems facility at dusk

Services · Facility & Site Closure

The building has to be empty by a date. The technology in it is the part nobody has a plan for.

Site closure is sold almost entirely by movers and furniture liquidators. They can clear a building. They cannot certify what happened to the data-bearing equipment that was in it — which is the only part of the job an auditor will ask about later.

Why this is its own service

Closure programmes fail in two places, and neither of them is the truck

The first is the building. Access windows, after-hours restrictions, freight elevator bookings, landlord notice periods and, in some buildings, labour rules decide whether a date is achievable. A programme priced without surveying those is priced against a schedule that will not hold. So does the circuit: most providers in this category subcontract the electrical work, which means the equipment is ready to come out and nobody on site that day can legally touch the plant it is connected to. We have a Master Electrician on staff and do that work ourselves.

The second is the record. A site that has been cleared is not the same as a site that has been accounted for.

Closing locations have the least reliable asset registers in an estate, because equipment moves between sites for years without anybody updating anything. That divergence surfaces at exactly the wrong moment — when someone is asked to confirm that every data-bearing device from a building that no longer exists was sanitized and certified.

This service is built around those two constraints. Our own national field crews do the removal inside the building's real access windows; every device is captured by serial at the point it is removed; and each site produces a closeout package that reconciles against what was found rather than against what the register claimed.

Seven phases

From a closure list to a reconciled programme record

Each site produces its own closeout package, and the programme record is those packages reconciled against one baseline.

  1. 01

    Programme planning

    A closure list is usually a spreadsheet from finance with dates on it. Turning that into a delivery plan means sequencing by geography and date, identifying which sites need survey and which do not, and agreeing what counts as done at each one.

    Produces
    Programme plan and site schedule
  2. 02

    Site survey and asset capture

    What technology is actually on site, and how much of it is on anyone's register. Closing sites are where the asset record is worst, because equipment has moved between locations for years without anybody updating anything.

    Produces
    Per-site asset list and variance report
  3. 03

    Scheduled removal

    Removal by our own national technical field crews, inside the building's access windows — after hours, freight elevator bookings, loading dock slots and landlord notice periods included. The constraint is usually the building, not the equipment.

    Produces
    Custody transfer at the point of removal
  4. 04

    Custody and transport

    Manifested, sealed and moved under an unbroken custody record into our R2v3 and RIOS certified facility in Lewisville, Texas, with reconciliation against the site list at receiving rather than at closeout.

    Produces
    Outbound manifest, chain-of-custody receipt
  5. 05

    Sanitization and certification

    Every data-bearing device sanitized against NIST 800-88 Revision 2 by media type, with a certificate issued per serial carrying method, operator, station, timestamp and validation hash. An asset without a passing record cannot advance.

    Produces
    Per-device erasure certificate
  6. 06

    Disposition and recovery

    Testing, grading and placement for what has a market, parts harvesting for what is worth more as components, and consignment to qualified certified downstream recyclers for the residual.

    Produces
    Grading record and disposition decision
  7. 07

    Per-site and programme closeout

    A closeout package per site — photographic evidence of the cleared area, the reconciled asset list, certificates, weight tickets and downstream manifests — and one reconciled record across the whole programme.

    Produces
    Site closeout packages and programme reconciliation

What the category gets wrong

Four things that decide whether a closure programme holds up

The movers take the furniture. The technology is a different job.

Search for site closure services and almost everything that comes back is a commercial mover or a furniture liquidator. They are good at clearing a building and they are not certified processors, they do not sanitize data-bearing devices, and they do not issue certificates. The desks and the chairs do not carry breach risk. The server in the comms room, the laptops in the drawer and the switch above the ceiling tile do.

Closing sites have the worst asset records in the estate

Equipment migrates between locations for years without the register catching up. By the time a site is closing, what is physically there and what is recorded as being there have diverged — which is precisely when somebody is asked to certify that everything was accounted for. Capture at removal, per serial, is the only version of that certificate that survives being questioned.

The clock is a lease, and the penalty sets the price

The reason a closure programme gets funded is not the disposition value. It is the holdover rent, the make-good obligation or the contract penalty that lands if the site is not clear by a date. That makes certainty the product being bought — and it is why sequencing, access-window planning and a per-site definition of done matter more than the rate card.

At programme scale, reporting is the deliverable

One site is a job. Two hundred sites is a reporting problem: which are done, which are scheduled, which slipped and why, and one reconciled record for the auditor at the end. Field crews without a certified disposition chain cannot produce that. Certified processors who subcontract the crews cannot control it.

Scope

Confirmed capability, and the one thing we do not offer at all

Four of these five rows are work we perform ourselves, including the electrical work most providers in this category subcontract. The fifth is work we do not do at all. Naming that is the difference between a scope statement that survives your diligence and one that produces an argument on site.

Confirmed today — programme delivery
Programme planning and sequencing, site surveys, scheduled removal by our own national technical field crews, and technical project management across a multi-site closure. This is WesternTechSystems Technical Services, under a written scope statement agreed before dates are booked.
Confirmed today — custody and sanitization
Serialized asset capture at the point of removal, chain of custody, secure receiving, and NIST 800-88 Revision 2 sanitization of every data-bearing device with a certificate issued per serial. Performed in our own R2v3 and RIOS certified facility.
Confirmed today — disposition and closeout
Testing, grading, placement through established channels, parts harvesting, and a per-site closeout package reconciled against the site asset list. Residual material is consigned to qualified, certified downstream recyclers under our R2v3 Appendix A downstream vendor management scope — the physical recycling is performed by those vendors, not by us.
Confirmed today — electrical work, in house
Disconnecting and reconnecting UPS, PDU and generator plant, and the electrical work that goes with removing technology from a site, is performed by our own people under a Master Electrician on staff, and it is insured. Most providers in this category subcontract it, which is the most common reason a closure date slips — the equipment is ready to come out and the circuit it sits on cannot legally be touched by anyone on site that day. Where a jurisdiction requires a locally licensed contractor of record, we say so at scoping and name who holds it.
Not offered — furniture, fixtures and make-good
Furniture liquidation, fixture removal, demolition and general make-good are outside our scope. Many closure programmes need both halves, and where that is the case we will work alongside the furniture or general contractor rather than claiming their scope. We would rather be one accountable party for the technology than a nominal single point of contact for a job we subcontract most of.

Where the equipment goes

One certified facility, not a chain of intermediaries

Received against the site list

Reconciliation happens at receiving, against the asset list captured at that specific site — so a discrepancy is found while the site's crew can still be asked about it, rather than at closeout weeks later.

Certified per device, not per site

Sanitization is selected against NIST 800-88 Revision 2 by media type and certified per serial, carrying method, operator, station, timestamp and validation hash. A site-level certificate is not evidence about a device.

Processed in one building

Intake, sanitization, testing, grading, repair, packaging and remarketing all happen in our 70,000 sq ft R2v3 and RIOS certified facility in Lewisville, Texas. Residual material moves onward to qualified certified downstream vendors under manifest.

See the facility, and what is verifiable in person

The variance report

The last chance to reconcile an estate before it stops existing

A closing site is the final opportunity to find out what was actually there. We report the difference between what your register expected and what our crews found — extras, missing items, and equipment that had migrated from a location that closed two years ago. For a lot of clients that report turns out to be more valuable than the recovery.

How our disposition process works
Technicians processing incoming enterprise IT assets at workbenches in the WesternTechSystems facility

FAQ

What facilities, real estate and IT teams ask

We are closing sites. Why not just use the movers we already have?
For the furniture, use them. The distinction worth drawing is that technology leaving a closing site is a data-security event, not a logistics event. A mover will clear the comms room competently and cannot sanitize what was in it, cannot issue a certificate per device, and is not audited against a certified processing standard. If nobody can later show what happened to each data-bearing device that left that building, the closure is complete and the compliance record is not. Most programmes end up needing both, and the sensible arrangement is that each party does the part it is actually accountable for.
How do you handle the sites that need electrical work?
In house. We have a Master Electrician on staff, we perform the electrical work ourselves, and we carry insurance for it — so disconnecting UPS, PDU and generator plant is part of the removal rather than a separate trade waiting on a separate schedule. It is worth asking every vendor you shortlist how they handle this, because it is the most common way a closure date slips: the equipment is ready to come out and the circuit it sits on cannot legally be touched by anyone who is on site that day. Where a particular jurisdiction requires a locally licensed contractor of record, that is identified at scoping rather than discovered on the day.
What does a per-site closeout package contain?
Photographic evidence of the cleared area, the reconciled asset list showing every device captured at that site and its outcome, a NIST 800-88 Revision 2 certificate per data-bearing device, weight tickets, and the downstream manifests for residual material. At programme level those reconcile into one record, so the question "was everything accounted for across all of it" has a documented answer rather than a reassuring one.
Can you work to a lease surrender date?
That is normally the whole constraint, and it should drive the plan rather than be an input to it. What matters is when access is actually available — after-hours windows, freight elevator bookings, loading dock slots, landlord notice periods, and in some buildings union labour rules. Those are what determine whether a date is achievable, so we survey against them and sequence to them. A programme priced without them is priced against a schedule that will not hold.
What kinds of closure do you handle?
Retail and multi-site estates, where point-of-sale, back-office servers, network gear and scanners come out of many locations on a rolling schedule. Branch and office sites. Data centre and colocation exits, which are covered in more depth under data center decommissioning. And closures that are part of a restructuring or a post-acquisition rationalisation, where the timetable is set by somebody other than IT. The programme mechanics are the same; the buyer and the reporting differ.
Our asset register is not accurate. Is that a problem?
It is normal, and it is the reason capture happens at removal rather than being taken from your register. We record what is physically on site by serial and report the variance against what was expected — extras, missing items and equipment that had migrated from another location. That variance report is often the most useful thing a closure programme produces, because it is the last opportunity to reconcile an estate before it stops existing.
Is there any value in what comes out of a closing site?
It depends heavily on the estate, and we would rather be straight about that than imply every closure pays for itself. Retail and branch technology — point-of-sale, older desktops, peripherals — recovers poorly. Network gear, recent laptops, servers and memory recover well. A mixed programme is worth pricing as a whole rather than site by site, because the blend is where the economics actually land. We will tell you which parts of your list are worth moving and which are not.
How do you report progress across a large programme?
Per site, against the schedule: complete, scheduled, or slipped with a reason. What that reporting is delivered through depends on the programme, and it is worth settling at scoping rather than assuming — some clients want a shared tracker, some want it in their own project tooling, and some want a weekly reconciliation against their register. What does not vary is that every site has a defined closeout package and every device has an outcome.
What happens to equipment with no resale value?
Components with value are harvested; everything else is consigned under manifest to qualified, certified downstream recyclers, who perform the physical recycling. Our role is qualifying those vendors under R2v3 Appendix A, making the routing decision and producing the documentation, and the downstream manifests form part of the closeout package rather than arriving months later. We are a certified processor, not a shredding or materials-recovery operation.
How is this different from data center decommissioning?
It is the same discipline at a different shape. A data centre exit is one site, high density, deep dependency mapping and a long engineering phase. A closure programme is many sites, lower density per site, and the difficulty sits in coordination, building access and reporting consistency across all of them. Where a closure includes a data centre or a colocation footprint, it is scoped into the same programme rather than run separately. See data center decommissioning.

Send us the closure list.

Sites, dates and roughly what is in each one is enough to start. We will tell you what is achievable against those dates and where the access constraints are going to bite.

Get a closure plan (469) 718-0004