Melbourne Museum

Museums Victoria is one of the largest public museum organisations in the southern hemisphere, safeguarding nearly 15.5 million items and welcoming more than two million visitors annually. Since 2016, the PEAK Platform, CIM’s operations automation software powered by AI, has supported Museums Victoria in maximising performance across three iconic exhibiting venues – Melbourne Museum, Scienceworks, Immigration Museum, and a dedicated collection facility in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.

The decade-long partnership has delivered results exceeding Museums Victoria’s goals across several high-impact areas including: preserving precious scientific and cultural collections, maximising efficiency for improved sustainability performance, and enhancing operational workflows to enable more data-driven and proactive decision-making. These achievements reflect a team effort, with Museums Victoria and its contractors driving greater collaboration, accountability, and new ways of working.

Key results

27% reduction in energy consumption achieved and maintained versus 2019 baseline year
Nearly 300,000 kWh of electricity saved in the past year
91% indoor environment score maintained
600 actions resolved, with a 98% completion rate
67 NPS (considered ‘excellent’) from Museums Victoria stakeholders

Partnership scope

4 major cultural facilities, spanning nearly 100,000sqm
680 items of equipment monitored across 300 thermal zones
6,500 data points tracked, or ~32 million automated annual checks
14 stakeholders collaborating on the platform

Scienceworks

Maintaining ideal conditions for artefact preservation

For Museums Victoria, preserving artefacts without compromising sustainability performance or visitor comfort presents an urgent and ongoing challenge. Many exhibition and collection spaces must remain within narrow temperature and humidity bands to prevent long-term degradation of the organisation’s 15.5 million scientific and cultural collection items.

CIM’s PEAK Platform plays a vital role in maintaining these conditions through its dedicated Indoor Environment module. The platform continuously monitors nearly 300 thermal zones, detecting and addressing issues related to air quality, CO2 levels, sensor faults, and other environmental risks, enabling teams to respond with urgency and precision before conditions impact the collection or visitor experience. With diverse and specialised use cases specific to museum spaces, from galleries and archives to storage and busy public areas, the platform’s flexible scalability has been crucial to the portfolio maintaining an average IEQ score above 90% since deployment.

The platform applies more than 2,700 AI-powered rules searching in real-time for faults, wastage, anomalies and opportunities across 6,500 data points, with customised logic designed specifically for critical museum zones. These rules detect even subtle deviations from ideal conditions and, when triggered via the Rules Engine containing nearly 1 billion AI algorithms, initiate a workflow to urgently address identified issues.

The platform also enables targeted reporting through real-time monitoring of indoor environment conditions, helping conservators like Karina Palmer meet stringent reporting and compliance requirements while guiding informed decision-making:

“We rely on PEAK to deliver accurate, real-time data for temperature and relative humidity in our galleries. It supports our conservation decisions and enables us to act quickly when issues arise, protecting the integrity of our collection.”

– Karina Palmer, Senior Conservator, Collection Preservation, Museums Victoria

Maximising energy efficiency and sustainability

Importantly, maintaining optimal indoor environment conditions has not come at the expense of efficiency. Energy consumption across the portfolio has been reduced by an impressive 27%, excluding additional savings made via solar installation roll-out in 2018.

As site activity returned to normal post-COVID, Museums Victoria set a clear goal: lock in the energy gains achieved during these periods of reduced visitation. With support from CIM and the PEAK Platform, that goal is being met. In the past year alone, the portfolio saved nearly 300,000 kWh of electricity, which equates to CO2 emissions avoided (CO2-e) of over 258,000kg. This has been powered by optimised equipment scheduling, targeted reporting, data-driven maintenance and proactive fault detection and diagnosis.

This work directly supports Museums Victoria’s broader sustainability commitments. The organisation is a participant in the Victorian State Government’s Greener Government Buildings program and is actively rolling out new initiatives through its Sustainable Museums Catalyst Group, which is focused on reducing environmental impact.

“Our valued partnership with Museums Victoria reflects what is possible when data, collaboration, and purpose come together. By embedding automation and data-driven operations, the team has accelerated progress toward sustainability goals with urgency, significantly reducing energy waste and emissions. Their commitment to accountability ensures these outcomes are not only achieved but sustained, while maintaining the integrity of their precious collections.”

– David Wright, Co-CEO, CIM

Immigration Museum

Facilitating an improved workflow

Across the Museums Victoria portfolio, 14 stakeholders, from conservation staff to building engineers and appointed contractors, collaborate daily through the PEAK Platform. It has facilitated the resolution of more than 600 actions at a 98% closure rate, leveraging the platform’s digital workflow functionality for accelerated completion of performance-improving opportunities across the entire supply chain.

In this way, the platform has supercharged asset operations, streamlining collaboration between team members. Issue identification and resolution now sit within a single shared workflow, improving transparency and accountability. The teams effortlessly assign Alerts to the correct team member. Once assigned, all team members are seamlessly collaborating in real-time to quickly and efficiently resolve issues.

“Over the past decade, our partnership with CIM has enabled us to operate more collaboratively across a complex and unique portfolio. PEAK brings together various members of our team in one shared workflow, helping us to maintain optimal conditions, reduce energy use, and stay ahead of performance issues.” – Nathan Marnell, Building Services Engineer, Museums Victoria

The result is a truly integrated facilities management model, one that unites operational, technical, and conservation teams around shared performance goals, underpinned by clear accountability for outcomes.

Looking ahead

With a decade of results behind them, Museums Victoria and CIM are now focused on the next phase of their journey, deepening a shared commitment to sustainability, enhancing asset performance, and protecting the collection through expanded use of the platform and newly tailored product capability.

As Museums Victoria continues to evolve, CIM remains a committed partner, supporting its mission to preserve history, educate the public, and deliver exceptional museum experiences for generations to come.

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