Rubicon Global Begins Texas Pilot, Selected as HGACBuy Service Provider

Rubicon Global, a technology company that provides a suite of Software as a Service (SaaS) products for waste, recycling and smart city solutions, announced the city of Irving, Texas, has selected Rubicon to provide a smart city pilot program to improve the residential waste and recycling services for its more than 240,000 residents. Rubicon also announced it has been selected as an approved service provider for the nationally recognized HGACBuy program, a government procurement service striving to make the governmental procurement process more efficient.

The city of Irving will use the RUBICONSmartCity platform in a six-month pilot program to enhance its waste and recycling offerings and outcomes, both in terms of sustainability and customer service.

The city has more than 40 collection vehicles that service approximately 42,000 locations, all of which will be a part of this pilot program. Of paramount interest for the city during this pilot is generating data for route optimization and management for its waste, recycling and brush vehicles, as well as collecting data and documentation on the volume of material picked up for every route. 

The RUBICONSmartCity platform includes a smartphone loaded with the Rubicon application, as well as an on-board computer plug-in device. Both will be placed in the city’s collection vehicles. This technology will allow for the collection of real-time service confirmations, provide GPS vehicle tracking and enable documentation of any driver issues or the inability to successfully complete a pickup. The manager portal in RUBICONSmartCity will collect all of the data and analytics and showcase to the city real-time route updates, daily reporting and operational insights.

“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 public strategy officer at Rubicon Global, in a statement. “Using RUBICONSmartCity, the city of Irving will be able to take the data that is pulled from its fleet and determine route optimization, vehicle location and streets that have been serviced—feeding important data back to the it and its citizens.” 

“The city of Irving continually is looking to take advantage of technology and data that helps improve efficiency, maintenance and makes the city better for our residents,” said Irving’s Solid Waste Service Director Brenda Haney in a statement. “We think this specific smart city solution from Rubicon Global could be a game changer for our fleet, and we look forward to exploring its impact and application throughout our system.”

Starting this month, Rubicon Global noted that cities and local governments across the country will be able to purchase RUBICONSmartCity directly though HGACBuy in the Smart City Fleet Services Equipment category. 

Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) is a political subdivision of the state of Texas that has been serving local governments nationwide for more than 40 years. All contracts available to participating members of HGACBuy have been awarded by virtue of a public competitive procurement process compliant with state statutes.  

“Cities and local governments across the country will now be able to secure the RUBICONSmartCity technology platform through HGACBuy, which will dramatically help to accelerate the procurement timeline,” said Allegretti in a statement. “As more and more cities look to implement technology as a central part of a path toward greater sustainability and ending waste, Rubicon will continue to be at the forefront of setting the smart cities agenda, and we are thrilled to be a part of the HGACBuy consortium to help make that mission a reality for cities and municipalities.” 

RUBICONSmartCity has been rolled out in more than 30 cities across the United States, including Atlanta; Columbus, Ga.; Fort Collins, Colo.; Montgomery, Ala.; Philadelphia; Santa Fe, N.M.; Spokane, Wash.; Tyler, Texas; and West Memphis, Ark. In addition to now being available on the HGACBuy consortium, it can also be purchased directly on the Amazon Web Services marketplace.