Hingham Moving Services provides lab movers in Columbia, SC for university, hospital, and biotech laboratories relocating across campus or to another state. Each move starts with an on-site survey and a bound quote. Our in-house crews then pack, transport, and place your equipment, and frozen specimens travel on generator-equipped trucks with wireless temperature monitoring.
Our Laboratory Moving Services
As laboratory movers in Columbia, SC, we move complete laboratories and individual instruments. We break down benches, disassemble, crate, and reassemble equipment, rig instruments into place, and reinstall everything at the destination, and frozen and cryogenic specimens travel in ultra-low temperature (ULT) packing with real-time temperature tracking. Moves run between and within campuses, across Columbia, South Carolina, and the Midlands, or across the country.
Calibrated instruments can lose calibration if they’re jolted, temperature-sensitive samples have no tolerance for heat, and regulated materials have their own rules, so each step is coordinated with the laboratory’s safety office. Our laboratory relocation services page covers the full method.
Equipment We Move and What to Plan For
| Equipment group | Published items | What to plan for |
|---|---|---|
| Cold storage | Freezers holding frozen cryogenic and biological specimens; contents of cold rooms; single- and double-stacked incubators | Let each unit return to its set temperature before samples go back in |
| Containment | Biosafety cabinets of all sizes; glove boxes; clean rooms | Biosafety cabinets must be decontaminated and certified before and after the move |
| Precision instruments | Zeiss, Olympus, and other microscopes; centrifuges of all sizes; high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) machines; spectrometers; PCR machines; imaging machines; microplate readers | Calibration or requalification by the manufacturer or service vendor |
| Standard laboratory equipment | Pumps; sterilizers; water baths, beakers, and pipettes | Placement per the laboratory's layout, checked against the inventory |
Institutions set their own rules for biosafety cabinets (BSCs). The University of South Carolina (USC) requires field certification before a relocated cabinet is used again, asks for a risk assessment before any relocation, and states that a cabinet shouldn’t be moved without first consulting its Biosafety Office, as set out in USC’s biosafety cabinet guidance.
How a Columbia Laboratory Move Works
Each move follows four steps: an on-site survey, a custom plan with a clear, upfront quote, packing and transport on dedicated trucks, and unloading and placement at the new site. Hingham Moving Services offers full coordination through our laboratory relocation management services.
Hospital and campus buildings commonly ask movers to reserve a freight elevator and a loading-dock window, and each campus or property manager sets its own rules, which we confirm at the on-site survey. Where the truck has to use metered spaces on a Columbia street, City of Columbia Parking Services can reserve them under a Bagged Meter Reservation Agreement, which must be approved before payment. The form lists commercial vehicles among its uses but doesn’t name moving trucks, so the arrangement for your street should be confirmed with Parking Services before move day.
Frozen, Cryogenic, and ULT Freezer Relocation
Frozen samples are often irreplaceable, so they travel on generator-equipped trucks with a redundant backup generator system: trailers have 110 V to 220 V outlets so freezers travel plugged in, backup freezers ride on board, and the temperature of each freezer is tracked for the whole trip, with overnight and 72-hour delivery options. Liquid nitrogen dewars and dry shippers are handled as your EHS office and the shipper’s instructions direct. Our cryogenic freezer relocation page explains the full method.
If the destination laboratory isn’t ready, our storage services include climate-controlled, bonded storage at our Massachusetts facilities, and we can also help find storage near the destination.
What Your EHS Office Needs to Settle Before Move Day
Before move day, the laboratory and its environmental health and safety (EHS) office settle four things, and we go through each one at the on-site survey:
- Chemical inventory: Your team updates the chemical inventory in your chemical hygiene plan before pack-out, so everyone knows what’s being moved and how it must be packed.
- Decontamination: The laboratory, or a contractor it appoints, decontaminates benches, instruments, incubators, and biosafety cabinets before movers handle them.
- What can and can’t travel: Chemicals can travel only as part of a full laboratory move, and which ones travel is decided at the on-site survey; anything that won’t travel leaves through the laboratory’s own disposal route.
- Biological samples: The laboratory’s biosafety officer decides how each material is classified and packed.
Under USC’s decommissioning procedure, a laboratory that is vacating its space requests a decommissioning consultation from Environmental Health and Safety, arranges removal of chemicals, biological and radioactive materials and wastes, cleans and decontaminates work areas and equipment, attaches an Equipment Decontamination form to each decontaminated item, and requests a decommissioning inspection. Equipment must be cleaned and decontaminated before movers handle it.
When the old space has to be closed out, Hingham Moving Services also offers help with laboratory decommissioning.
Laboratory Moves Across Columbia and the Midlands
Every move here is made by our own classroom-trained, in-house crews, who travel from Hingham Moving Services’ offices in Hanover, Woburn, Wellesley, and Millis, Massachusetts. It is a route our crews know: one of our moves ran from MIT to Columbia, South Carolina.
We serve Downtown Columbia, Five Points, Forest Acres, Shandon, Rosewood, and the surrounding parts of Richland and Lexington Counties. USC, Prisma Health Richland Hospital, and the Dorn VA Medical Center are all in this area, and each campus sets its own building access and safety rules for a laboratory move, as USC’s rules above show.
Quotes, Insurance, and Our 100% Guarantee
Every move gets a free estimate after the on-site survey, and pricing is bound, so you may pay less than the quoted amount but never more. Under the 100% guarantee, you don’t pay until every portion of the move has been completed as promised in the moving agreement. The estimate depends mainly on the number and type of instruments, freezer count and sample volume, distance, building access and off-hours work, crating, and storage, and our laboratory relocation cost page explains each factor.
Hingham Moving Services brings decades of experience and carries liability, workers’ compensation, and motor truck cargo coverage; see our moving service insurance page for details.
Columbia, SC, Laboratory Moving FAQs
Yes. We move laboratories across town or across the country, with long-distance service across the 48 contiguous states and international moves, so a move between Columbia and Charleston, including the area around the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), or to another state follows the same steps, starting with an on-site survey.
Yes. A move between buildings on one campus follows the same process as any other relocation, starting with an on-site survey, and we plan dock and freight elevator time at both buildings.
No. Our movers are classroom-trained and in-house, and we never subcontract your move to a third party. The team that loads your laboratory is the team that unloads it.
Yes. Off-hours and phased plans are available: instruments move in groups so your critical work can continue while the rest travels.
Schedule an On-Site Laboratory Survey
The next step is a free on-site survey, which gives you a custom plan and a bound quote. To book one with our lab movers in Columbia, SC, contact Hingham Moving Services.
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