The technical department you don't have to hire.
Fire safety, maintenance, repair and technical management — on retainer, not on payroll. One contract, one number, one person accountable.
01 · The arithmetic
What an in-house technician costs per year, loaded. He is excellent. He is also one person.
Availability
Weekdays, minus five weeks of holiday, minus illness. Buildings prefer to fail outside these hours.
Depth
One person, one skill set. For integral tests, fire documentation and specialist trades, you call someone else anyway.
Memory
Thirty years of knowing which valve does what — stored in exactly one place, which eventually retires.
The search
When he resigns, replacing him takes the better part of a year. The building does not pause while you look.
We are the department version of him: planned, on call, documented — and never on your payroll. Hotels are judged in the lobby and lost in the basement. We work on the second one.
Six systems keep a hotel open. Most houses buy them from six different people.
Roof plant
Ventilation, heat pump, lift machinery. Above the guests and out of mind — until the day it isn't.
Guest floors
Detection, emergency lighting, door hardware, in-room technology. The only part of the building your guests will ever review.
Risers
Water, heating, electrical, data. Every floor depends on them, and almost nobody has a current drawing of where they run. We draw them.
Lift
A statutory inspection cycle, a maintenance contract someone signed in 2014, and a call at 07:40 on a Sunday. We have taken all three off many desks.
Ground floor
Fire panel, escape routes, public areas. Where every inspection starts, and where it usually finds something.
Basement
Heating plant, water treatment, main distribution. Where our working day actually begins — usually before yours.
Six systems. Six suppliers — or one number, and one person who already knows your building.
Request a technical dossier →Three levels of responsibility. Most houses start at the first.
Do you know when your building last had an integral test?
The records usually exist. They're just in five different places, and three of them were only known to the person who left last year. One day on site. One document: every system recorded, every interval with its date and evidence, every gap ranked by risk and cost.
| Inspection | Interval | Last | Due | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Integral test, fire systems | 4 years | 03.2023 | 03.2027 | ✓ protocol |
| Emergency lighting | 2 × yearly | 02.2026 | 08.2026 | ✓ protocol |
| Fire alarm panel | yearly | 11.2025 | 11.2026 | ✓ protocol |
| Electrical installation | 5 years | — | overdue | none |
| Evacuation drill | periodic | 09.2024 | — | ✓ report |
| Kitchen extraction | yearly | 06.2026 | 06.2027 | ✓ protocol |
The chains run their technical departments on software. Now so do you.
Big-brand hotels track their buildings in systems costing hundreds of francs a month — run by engineering teams you don't have. Your retainer includes the whole apparatus: the portal on your desk, the app in your staff's pocket, and us doing the part the software can't.
- Your dossier, alive — it updates every time we work in your building
- Every job traceable — photos before and after, cost, response time
- Inspection dates that email you before they become findings
- Our promises, measured — you see our response times. So do we.
- Staff report issues in 20 seconds — photo, room, send. No training.
The compliance layer is free for every Swiss house, with or without us → Kontrollheft
Fourteen buildings, no logo wall.
Taken over in 2023, after the house technician of thirty-one years retired. His successor is a document — 214 pages, and it doesn't take holidays.
Passed its integral test in March — the first in nine years. The previous one was not late. It was missing. Nobody had noticed, which is precisely the problem with missing things.
Chain-affiliated, audited twice a year. The technical file is now the shortest item on the audit agenda. The GM would like the other items to meet us.
Our clients' guests believe the building simply works, and we intend to keep it that way. References in person, from the owners — a technical partner who advertises with your name has confused whose reputation is the product.
Since 1916
The Machac family has been in trade for four generations — saddlery, haulage, removals under the words «Der sorgfältige Umzug», and now the technical side of Swiss hotels.
In 108 years the family firm has never once been fashionable, and never once been gone. We think that is the right ratio for a company you hand your building to.
The whole story →