Your laboratory relocation cost depends on laboratory size, instrument count, cold-chain requirements, distance, timeline, and building access. Hingham Moving Services starts every laboratory move with an on-site survey to build a custom relocation plan for research, hospital, and corporate research laboratories. All estimates are free and pricing is bound, meaning you may pay less than the quoted amount but never more.
What Drives Laboratory Relocation Cost
How much does it cost to move a lab? It depends on the drivers in the table below, and our laboratory relocation services price every move from an on-site survey rather than a formula. We publish no rates or ranges, because two laboratories of the same size can need very different moves. The table sets out what moves the price and how you can reduce your lab relocation budget.
| Cost driver | Why it moves the price | How to reduce it |
|---|---|---|
| Lab size and instrument count | More items mean more crew time, packing material, and truck space | Give the surveyor an itemized inventory |
| Instrument type and sensitivity | Sensitive, heavy instruments need custom packing, slower handling, and preparation, such as draining water-jacketed incubators | Finish preparation before move day |
| Cold-chain scope | Powered, monitored transport and backup freezer capacity add equipment and planning | Consolidate freezer contents and decide what stays frozen |
| Distance | Longer trips add driving days and time under temperature control | Ship in one consolidated load where possible |
| Timeline and scheduling | Compressed dates, after-hours work, and multiple phases add crew time | Share target dates early and limit phases |
| Building access at both ends | Docks, freight elevators, long carries, and limited hours slow each load | Get building rules early |
| Storage between sites | Equipment is handled twice and stored in between | Tie the move date to the new laboratory's readiness |
Build your budget around an itemized inventory, not square footage, and only compare quotes that cover the same scope, since a lower price may mean fewer services. Set aside a contingency for third-party work that your laboratory arranges separately, such as manufacturer service and biosafety cabinet testing.
What Your Bound Laboratory Moving Quote Covers
With Hingham Moving Services, your quoted lab moving cost is a ceiling, not a starting point. What is in a Hingham Moving Services quote:
- A free estimate
- An on-site survey of your equipment, materials and timing before the price is set
- A custom relocation plan and a clear, upfront quote
- Bound pricing: you may pay less than the quoted amount but never more
- Packing and transport using dedicated trucks
- Unloading and placement of your equipment at the new location
- Classroom-trained drivers and crews who are our own employees, never subcontractors; the team that loads the laboratory unloads it
- The 100% guarantee: no payment until every portion of the move is completed as promised in your moving agreement
Use the on-site survey to settle what your laboratory relocation quote covers. Questions to raise:
- Is crating included for individual instruments?
- Is after-hours or phased work needed?
- Will equipment need storage between sites?
- How will frozen samples travel?
- Who disconnects and reconnects each instrument?
- What does each building require from the mover?
Most of the hidden costs of a lab move fall outside the moving company’s quote and are arranged and paid for by the laboratory, its environmental health and safety (EHS) office, its institution or a specialist vendor. Boston University “Guidance for Laboratory Relocation of Hazardous Materials”, for example, places hazardous materials with the laboratory and its EHS office during a move. Identifying these costs before the survey keeps the total budget accurate.
| Cost outside the quote | Typically arranged by | When it is incurred |
|---|---|---|
| Laboratory decommissioning and decontamination of the old space | The lab and its EHS office | Before movers arrive |
| Biosafety cabinet (BSC) decontamination and recertification | The lab, through a field certifier | Decontamination before, recertification after |
| Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) disconnection, reinstallation, recalibration, and requalification | The manufacturer or service vendor | Before disconnection, after placement |
| Chemicals that cannot travel with the move | The lab's EHS office | Before the move |
| Compressed gas cylinders | The gas supplier or approved contractor | Before the move and after |
| Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) registration change of address | The registrant (see 21 CFR 1301.51) | Before controlled substances are relocated |
| Building requirements, including the mover's certificate of insurance and dock reservations | Facilities or property management | Before the move |
| Local biosafety permits for the new address | The biosafety office | Before work restarts |
| Temporary storage | The lab, with a storage provider | When the new space is unready |
| Downtime / lost research time | The lab | From shutdown until instruments return to service |
Biosafety cabinets: NSF/ANSI 49-2026 sets the field tests for these cabinets. OSHA requires certification at installation, after any move and annually in HIV and HBV research laboratories and production facilities, and university procedures expect recertification after any relocation (see Lab Manager on biosafety cabinet certification).
Chemicals: the party offering a hazardous material for transport must classify, package and label it (49 CFR 173.22; see the FMCSA hazardous materials compliance overview), so the EHS office decides what happens to a laboratory’s chemicals. Hingham Moving Services offers no stand-alone chemical moves; any chemicals in a full laboratory move are decided at the on-site survey. For disposal, see laboratory decommissioning.
Controlled substances: a DEA registrant changing address requests a modification of registration, handled like a new application; 21 CFR 1301.51 charges no fee for it, so the cost is staff time and lead time.
Local permits: some cities regulate biological laboratories locally; in Boston, for example, the Boston Public Health Commission Board of Health regulations require permits that list each physical location, so ask your biosafety office whether the new space must be added before work restarts.
Lost research days are a real cost, and they rarely appear on any quote. Schedule around experiments, decide what moves first, and plan biosafety cabinet recertification and freezer transfers well ahead of move day so your team gets back to bench work sooner. For more, see how to minimize downtime during a commercial move.
Between sites, Hingham Moving Services offers climate-controlled, bonded storage through our storage services. For wider planning, see our guide to budgeting for a move.
On-Site Survey and Four-Step Laboratory Moving Process
Every Hingham Moving Services laboratory move begins with an on-site survey of your equipment, materials and timing, so your free estimate rests on what a surveyor has seen, not on guesses.
Our full-service laboratory moving process follows four simple steps:
- On-site survey: a visit to assess equipment, materials and timing.
- Custom relocation plan and a clear, upfront quote.
- Packing and transport using proven methods and dedicated trucks.
- Unloading and placement at the new location.
For a precise quote, we recommend you gather the following information prior to your on-site estimate:
- Equipment inventory: Make, model, and any required manufacturer service before disconnection.
- Cold-chain needs: Freezer and refrigerator counts, plus items requiring temperature control during transit.
- Building layouts: Room lists or floor plans for both buildings.
- Building rules: Docks, freight elevators, permitted hours and any certificate of insurance required.
- Timeline: Target dates, blackout dates, and experiments that cannot be interrupted.
- Exclusions: List of items that won’t be moving, such as chemicals, gas cylinders, and surplus equipment.
- Key decision-makers: The principal investigator or laboratory manager, EHS, and facilities representatives.
- New site readiness: The date the new space will be ready to receive equipment.
Check out how to move a laboratory for details on how long each phase takes.
Insurance, Valuation Coverage and Building Insurance Certificates
Hingham Moving Services carries liability, workers’ compensation, and motor truck cargo coverage for laboratory moves, and under our 100% guarantee you pay nothing until the move is completed as promised in your moving agreement.
Valuation and insurance are not the same thing. Valuation is the level of liability a mover accepts for the goods it carries, while insurance is separate coverage a shipper or its institution may hold, a distinction FMCSA liability and protection guidance draws clearly. FMCSA’s two valuation levels apply to interstate household goods moves; a laboratory move’s valuation is set in the moving agreement, so get the terms in writing and see our valuation coverage page.
Many campuses and property managers ask the moving company for a certificate of insurance (COI) before crews may use docks or freight elevators, as the Columbia University Irving Medical Center moving checklist shows, and those docks and elevators usually have to be reserved, sometimes outside business hours. Bring each building’s rules to the on-site survey, and read up on relocation insurance for a laboratory move.
Frozen Biological and Cryogenic Transport Costs
Moving frozen samples costs more than moving standard equipment, because the materials need powered, monitored transport and backup capacity in case a freezer unit fails in transit.
Hingham Moving Services provides:
- Generator-equipped trucks, with trailers wired for 110 V to 220 V outlets, so freezers travel plugged in and powered
- Redundant backup generator system on board
- Backup freezers carried in case a unit fails at any point
- Wireless temperature monitoring, which tracks each freezer for the whole trip
- Overnight and 72-hour delivery options
Relocation costs for frozen samples depend on the number and type of freezers, the temperatures you need held, whether samples travel in powered freezers or insulated bins with dry ice, delivery window, and travel distance.
The ISBER Best Practices, Fifth Edition (2023) include guidance on relocating a repository, validating the cold chain and keeping backup storage capacity.
Note that an ultra-low freezer is frozen storage, not cryogenic storage: a difference worth confirming before you request cryogenic freezer relocation.
Laboratory Equipment and Completed Laboratory Moves
Hingham Moving Services is Massachusetts-based, with offices in Hanover, Woburn, Wellesley, and Millis and decades of experience, and moves research, hospital and corporate research laboratories nationwide. Our page for lab movers in Boston is one city example.
Our in-house, classroom-trained crews pack and handle a wide variety of laboratory instruments, machines, and systems, including:
- Single- and double-stacked incubators
- Centrifuges of all sizes
- Freezers holding frozen cryogenic and biological specimens
- Zeiss and Olympus microscopes
- HPLC machines
- Biosafety cabinets of all sizes
- Glove boxes
- Clean rooms
- Cold room contents
- Spectrometers
- PCR machines
- Pumps
- Sterilizers
- Imaging machines
- Microplate readers
Biogen frozen-sample move. After Biogen acquired Reata Pharmaceuticals, we moved frozen samples from Texas to Connecticut and to Biogen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, packed in insulated bins with dry-ice pellets and a temperature probe in each cooler.
University of Chicago to San Francisco full-laboratory move. After several site visits, an eight-person crew packed a full laboratory, frozen biologicals included, from HPLC machines to glove boxes and biosafety cabinets, and finished packing and loading within three days. Unloading in San Francisco took place on day five.
Laboratory Relocation Cost FAQ
A lab move is more expensive due to sensitive and heavy instruments, special preparations such as draining water-jacketed incubators, temperature-controlled samples, and post-move recertification and recalibration. These factors add labor, equipment, and/or third-party services not required for an office relocation.
The pricing method for a long-distance laboratory move is the same as for a local one: an on-site survey, then a clear, upfront quote with bound pricing. What changes is the scope that survey measures, including driving days, the time frozen samples spend under power and monitoring, and the delivery window. Hingham Moving Services handles local work, long-distance relocations across the 48 contiguous states, and international moves.
Hingham Moving Services offers a 100% guarantee: you do not pay until every portion of your laboratory move has been completed as promised in your moving agreement. Pricing is also bound, so you may pay less than the quoted amount but never more.
Research can often continue while the laboratory is being moved if the work is phased: move in stages, transfer critical samples first under powered, monitored transport, and schedule recertification around your priorities. Raise your preferred approach at the on-site survey so the plan reflects it. For timelines, see how to move a laboratory.
Request a Free Laboratory Relocation Estimate
The surest way to pin down your laboratory relocation cost is a free estimate built from an on-site survey, with bound pricing. Gather your inventory, target dates and building rules, then contact Hingham Moving Services to schedule the survey and get your written quote.
