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Fort Lauderdale board reviews CityWorks rollout, data gaps and consultant plan
Summary
CityWorks has been implemented across core utilities, officials said, but board members pressed staff on data gaps, condition-scoring, and why the city plans to contract multiple consultants to standardize inspections and support capital planning.
Craig Barrett, the city works administrator for public works engineering, told the Infrastructure Advisory Board on May 4 that Fort Lauderdale’s CityWorks system is now the operational system of record for water, wastewater and stormwater maintenance and compliance. "CityWorks is a GIS-centric enterprise asset management system," Barrett said, adding that it links GIS asset data with work orders so staff can see where assets are located, what work has been completed and where issues are occurring.
Barrett outlined a multi-year implementation: CityWorks work began in 2018, stormwater and wastewater collections were onboarded in August 2022, the city moved to CityWorks Online as a cloud service in July 2024, water distribution was added in July 2025, and a GTL plant came online in 2026. He said CityWorks supports preventive maintenance, improved documentation for audits and regulatory reporting, and provides dashboards supervisors can use to monitor open work orders, inspections and program KPIs.
Members pressed Barrett on data quality and the plan to hire consultants. Barrett said the city is preparing an asset-management contract to establish condition scoring, risk metrics and improved capital-improvement planning. "We have the pieces for a great Lamborghini," he said, "we just need to put those pieces together and tune it." He named three firms that will be in the contracting pool: Jacobs, Stantec and Walpert, and explained the city intends to use task orders and may use one firm per task rather than three working on the same job simultaneously.
Board members asked why three firms were needed and urged a common methodology so analyses are comparable. Barrett said the pool model gives staff flexibility if one vendor is overloaded and that a clear criteria package will align approaches. Members also urged that the solicitation explain precisely what consultants will do and why the work is timely when it reaches the commission.
Several members probed how CityWorks will ingest field and contractor data. Barrett said the city currently accepts as-builts as AutoCAD files or PDFs that staff convert into GIS and that the goal is to receive GIS-compatible files (GDB) so less manual work is required. He said CCTV/PACP inspection data will be used to produce condition scores (a one-to-five scale) and feed probability-of-failure and business-risk calculations but acknowledged there remain "blank spots" in condition data that consultants will help fill.
On automation and analytics, Barrett said the city is upgrading from Trimble CityWorks Respond to Trimble Unity, which includes AI-driven query features. He cautioned that human oversight and a data custodian will remain essential: "Nothing gets through CityWorks that I don't see — there's always somebody between the data and the system," he said.
The discussion concluded with a demonstration of dashboards for valves, manholes and inlets. Barrett showed how staff can open an inspection record, view photos and produce lists of assets flagged for cleaning or repair. He recommended standardized inspection templates and QA/QC processes so CityWorks can reliably produce priority lists for budgeting and repairs.
Next steps: staff will finish the solicitation for an asset-management contract and expect to bring it to the commission soon; consultants would be issued task orders to refine inspection templates, build condition-scoring methods, and support CIP planning. Board members asked staff to prepare clear procurement materials explaining the need, scope and deliverables.
