"People move more today than they ever did," Davis says, so corporations have a growing need to manage moves of groups of employees that range from just a few in one building to thousands who are relocating from one building or campus to another. Another reason that the move management business is growing, he tells GlobeSt.com, is the continuing trend toward outsourcing of corporate services.

"Corporations in the past would designate someone within the company to be the move coordinator, but that has a tendency to distract them from their regular duties," Davis explains. What companies want today is a move that is so smooth and seamless that an employee can go home one night from one place and report for work at a different place the next day without any down time because of complications or delays associated with a move.

Managing a move means attending to every detail and task of moving people, furniture and equipment. That means hiring the moving company, making sure that it completes the move on time; arranging for telephones, Internet service, electrical power and other technology services; transporting computers and other equipment for each individual work station and ensuring that the employees know when and where to report for work.

Move management involves two basic types of relocations. One is moving hundreds or thousands of employees from one building or campus to a new headquarters or campus. The other is called "churn assistance" and involves moving groups of people within a building or a campus, often on a daily basis.

Churn services have evolved because companies have reduced the cost of moving so much that moving teams from place to place within a building or a campus to work on different projects has become much more cost-effective than it was in years past, Davis says. CBRE's move management specialists remain on site to coordinate both these "churn" moves within buildings and the larger moves involving entire work forces.

Davis tells GlobeSt.com that CBRE expects the move management business to continue growing, so the acquisition of Project Advantage will help to position the company for that growth. Founded in 1991 by Helen Dennis, now managing director of CBRE| Project Advantage.

Project Advantage has worked with nearly 500 companies throughout the US, Canada and the UK, including Ford Motor Co. and Washington Mutual. It has moved more than 200,000 people in projects totaling more than 80 million sf.