It’s still summer, but the City of Montreal is already thinking about winter — particularly, how to remove all the snow more efficiently than it has done in the past.
The city held a contest asking local startups and tech companies to build them a snow removal application.
The winner of the $5,000 prize, announced Saturday at Montreal’s Notman House, is an app built by Heritage Software.
Founder Gregory Cerallo said his app is about helping Montrealers know when and where the snow plows will strike next.
“It gives you live information based on the city’s open data. Also, you can park your car in the application and get push notifications if the status of your park changes,” Cerallo said.
That means you can tell the smartphone app where you parked and it can tell you when the snow plow is near.
Cerallo said winning the app contest legitimizes his and his co-founder’s decision to get into city-related applications.
"Our company actually went through a major pivot recently where we decided to stop creating apps at random and really focus on the municipal market, so for us to be able to win this competition and really put our food down in the municipal market in Quebec is huge,” he said.
The city will offer a contract of up to $25,000 to develop the snow removal notification app, which will be used in five boroughs this winter as a test run.