When Growth Outpaces Infrastructure: How The City Of Conroe Built A Future-Forward Software-Defined Water System Ready For What's Next By Sielen Namdar Across the U.S., water utilities are navigating a challenging reality: population growth is accelerating faster than infrastructure investment, while expectations for reliability, transparency, and security continue to rise. Many systems were built decades ago, long before today’s demands for real-time data, remote operations, or rapid scalability. For fast-growing cities, the challenge is no longer whether modernization is needed, but how to do it without increasing risk or complexity. The City of Conroe, Texas offers a clear example of what it looks like to modernize with intent, by addressing not just equipment, but the underlying architecture of water operations. A Utility Strained By Rapid Growth Over the past 20 years, Conroe’s population has more than tripled, from roughly 30,000 to more than 115,000 residents. As demand surged, the city’s water operations struggled to keep pace. Operators spent up to five hours a day manually collecting and reporting data. Issues were often identified only after customers called to complain. And as new facilities were added, engineering and commissioning timelines became longer and more complex. Incremental upgrades were no longer enough. Conroe’s leadership recognized that continuing to bolt modern tools onto legacy systems would not solve the problem. What the city needed was a more flexible foundation, one that could scale with growth, improve visibility across operations, and reduce day‑to‑day operational burden. Moving Beyond Traditional Automation To address these challenges, Conroe partnered with Schneider Electric to adopt EcoStruxure™ Automation Expert, an open, software‑defined automation platform. The decision marked a shift away from traditional, hardware‑dependent control systems toward a more modular, standardized approach. By separating software from hardware, the city was able to standardize operations across water and wastewater facilities while retaining