Award-winning pilot program gets three year commitment to increase efficiency, preserve finite resources and improve service

MONTGOMERY – The City of Montgomery today announced a formal three year agreement has been reached with Rubicon Global (Rubicon) to equip more than 60 City vehicles with its RUBICONSmartCityTM technology to improve performance, reduce maintenance costs and enhance residential and commercial sanitation service.
 
“The RUBICONSmartCity platform helps cities of all sizes leverage data to make smarter decisions about waste, recycling, and city operations, leading to improvements in sustainability and quality of life that map to an overall mission to end waste,” said Michael Allegretti, Chief Strategy Officer, Rubicon Global. “Piloting RUBICONSmartCity, the City of Montgomery was able to view and analyze data that is helping the City improve customer service and shape future policy decisions. We are thrilled that the City of Montgomery decided to award Rubicon this smart city contract, and we look forward to a fantastic partnership in the coming years.” 
 
A technology company providing software as a service solutions for smart city management processes, Rubicon helps clients optimize daily operations and ultimately find myriad efficiencies, and thus costs savings – from fleet and equipment repair costs to manpower and overtime. The platform includes a phone-based mobile app, a plug-in device and a web portal allowing the City’s Sanitation Department to track key metrics, like service confirmations, missed pickups and issues at the curb. The City’s Fleet Management Department will harvest data to track vehicle usage and maintenance needs in real-time.
 
“Not only are we saving staff time and taxpayer dollars with Rubicon, but this is an essential part of our overall Smart City strategy that ensures our sanitation and fleet organizations work smarter, not harder, to enhance our residential and commercial services,” Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange said. “It is another investment that will pay dividends for future growth and development by affecting overall quality of life in the Capital of Dreams.”
 
The three year contract with Rubicon stems from a successful six-month pilot program launched in 2018. The partnership proved beneficial to both parties and earned the Smart Cities Connect Smart 50 Award for Urban Operations, an annual awards program recognizing the 50 most transformative smart city projects across the world. More importantly, the software unleashed a realm of new capabilities that could be useful throughout the City’s public works and public safety organizations. Part of this included transforming the City’s sanitation fleet into a mobile data collector by enabling trucks to flag potholes, overgrown grass, graffiti and other issues found across routes.
 
“We saw ourselves as co-innovators with Rubicon,” Montgomery City Services Director Chris Conway said. “Once we saw the success in managing our routes and fleet performance, we began testing new ways the application could save time, staff resources and money while better serving residents. Rubicon – and other projects, like Roadbotics and StarWatch – are only the beginning for Montgomery as we build the blueprint for what it actually means to be a Smart City.”
 
The City also announced a two year extension of its partnership with RoadBotics, which launched in July 2018. RoadBotics’ AI-based program has since offered a much more comprehensive and unbiased analysis of Montgomery’s paving needs at a fraction of the time and costs associated with human analysis. Along with freeing staff resources, the program pinpoints road issues undetectable to the human eye as well as defects that could snowball into larger issues down the line. This proactive approach should result in bigger taxpayer savings and longer-lasting roads.
 
For more information on this program and Montgomery’s Smart City initiatives, visit the City of Montgomery website at www.montgomeryal.gov.
 
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Griffith Waller
Public Relations Specialist
City of Montgomery
(334) 625-2726 (office)
(334) 235-0871 (cell)
gwaller@montgomeryal.gov