The American Public Works Association’s PWX conference is one of the most important gatherings of the year for public works professionals — and this August, CIPO will be in Houston for PWX 2026.
PWX brings together directors, engineers, asset managers, and technology leaders from municipalities, utilities, and public agencies across the country. For us, it’s one of the best opportunities of the year to connect with the professionals who are managing the kinds of complex capital improvement programs that CIPO was built for.
This year’s agenda is packed with sessions on artificial intelligence, capital program modernization, and data-driven decision-making — topics that are at the core of what we do. Here are a few sessions on our radar and why they matter.
AI Adoption for Modern Leaders: A 30-60-90 Day Playbook
AI adoption is no longer a future conversation for public works agencies. It’s happening now — and the agencies that move deliberately will have a significant advantage over those that don’t. This session tackles the practical side of what AI adoption actually looks like inside a public agency: how to sequence it, how to build internal buy-in, and what the first 90 days should look like.
At CIPO, we built AI into the platform from day one rather than bolting it on after the fact. CIPO AI is purpose-built for capital program workflows, running directly inside your existing project data so teams can move without the implementation overhead that typically slows AI adoption down. This session speaks directly to what we hear from agencies every day.
AI Readiness and Reality in Water and Wastewater: When Your Data Disagrees With Your AI
This is one of the most honest conversations happening in the industry right now. AI is only as good as the data it works with — and for water and wastewater agencies managing decades of project records across disconnected systems, data readiness is a real challenge.
One of the core design principles behind CIPO AI is that it works with the structured and unstructured project data that already exists in your environment. No data migration. No preparation. It understands project context because it was built to operate inside a PMIS, not alongside one. For water and wastewater agencies evaluating AI, this session is essential.
Simplifying Complexity: How Public Works Owners Can Move from Overwhelmed to Integrated
The title of this session could be CIPO’s elevator pitch. Public works agencies managing large capital programs are almost universally dealing with the same problem: information spread across too many systems, too many manual processes, and too little real-time visibility into what is actually happening across the program.
This session explores what integration actually looks like in practice for public works owners. CIPO addresses this directly by bringing project management, document controls, correspondence, drawings management, and AI-powered intelligence into one connected platform. No patchwork. No gaps.
From Static Status Quo to Smart: How Dashboards Transformed Sugar Land's Capital Improvement Planning
The City of Sugar Land’s experience moving from static reporting to dynamic, real-time capital improvement dashboards is exactly the kind of outcome-driven story that resonates across public works. Visibility into a capital program should not require a team of analysts and a two-day reporting cycle.
CIPO gives agencies real-time visibility across every active project in their portfolio, connecting the project data, the documents, and the decisions so leadership always has an accurate picture without chasing it down.
From Best Tasting to Best Managed: How AI and Engineering Are Future-Proofing Sugar Land's Water System
A great example of AI being applied to a real operational challenge in the water sector. Predictive planning, AI-assisted decision-making, and smarter infrastructure management are no longer aspirational for water agencies. They are actively being deployed.
This is the direction the industry is moving, and CIPO AI is built to support exactly this kind of future-proofing for capital program teams.
CIPO AI Phase 2 Is Going Live This September
PWX arrives at a significant moment for CIPO. We are launching Phase 2 of CIPO AI this September, bringing Spec Interrogation and Duplication Detection capabilities live for our users. This includes automatically generating draft submittals and specification sections, intelligent drawing number recognition, and enhanced duplicate detection across RFIs and submittals.
If you are attending PWX, we would love to connect in Houston and show you where CIPO AI is headed. Whether you are a current CIPO user, exploring PMIS options, or simply curious about what AI looks like inside a capital program, we are happy to walk you through it.
