Case Study: Kunsthistorisches Museum

The Kunsthistorisches Museum near the Hofburg was built for the extensive collections of the imperial family. With its collection of important works and the world’s largest Bruegel collection, it is now one of the most important art collections anywhere in the world.

The museum occupies 8 different building and in total covers some 86,000 square metres in total. This vast area welcomes over 1.7 million visitors each years across some 800 unique events – which clearly generates a significant amount of dust and debris settling aove head height.

With such an extensive cleaning task at hand, the maintenance team of 30 onsite are always on the lookout for new innovations that can help them complete their work more efficiently.

Thomas Gaisberger, the person responsible for the complete building cleaning at the KHM, travelled to CMS in Berlin last September to look for innovations. At the SpaceVac stand, Thomas discussed his requirements from Joachim from the Kärcher Center Cotraco – our distributor for Germany. 

The professional immediately recognised the advantages of the system and, after a positive initial discussion with company owner Joachim Löffler, made an appointment for a demonstration in Vienna to test the device at his own premises. This test then took place in the winter of last year.

Gaisberger noted; ”We regularly have to clear thousands of square metres of stucco walls, cornices and showcases of dust and have ten modern elevating platforms in use for this purpose. Unfortunately, we cannot reach all areas with these platforms because we were prevented from accessing them by showcases or other structural measures. This is now a thing of the past with the new pole system. We can now really reach every point in the building, which brings us a further increase in the quality of our work,” says Gaisberger after the experience of the first few weeks in regular operation. In our particular case, however, we still use the access platform in many areas, but our employees now not only get to work everywhere, but the cleaning result is easier to achieve and less tiring. This naturally boosts motivation,”.

Joachim Loefller from Cotraco in Germany who oversaw the implementation with the team at the museum added “The introductory phase here at KHM was carried out carefully and slowly in order to optimally accustom the employees to the new work technology in this very delicate working environment. I am very enthusiastic about the professionalism of all those involved here at KHM and I am delighted about the new reference customer in Austria, where we are still looking for sales partners. After all, the SpaceVac system can not only be used in museums and churches, but also in the food industry with colour-coded nozzles or in the industrial sector in general, up to dust Ex-zones and high voltage areas. Our strength is simply being able to deliver a tailor-made concept for each individual object. The investment usually pays for itself within just a few months or, depending on the frequency of cleaning, after just a few uses,”.

To find out more about SpaceVac and how you can put the system to work in your territory – be sure to talk to us today, or use the distributor map to locate your nearest SpaceVac representative.