Dive into Water Solutions with Autodesk!

The right tool depends on the system you manage and the question you are trying to answer:

Choose InfoWorks WS Pro or InfoWater Pro when your focus is potable water distribution networks and service reliability. InfoWater Pro is the better fit for teams already standardized on Esri ArcGIS Pro, since it works natively inside that geospatial environment.

Choose InfoWorks ICM when you need integrated catchment modeling that combines sewer, river, and surface flooding behavior in a single simulation.

Choose InfoDrainage when the deliverable is a compliant, buildable drainage design rather than a citywide network model.

Choose Info360 Asset, Info360 Insight, or Info360 Plant when the priority shifts from design to operations: condition assessment, capital planning, network performance monitoring, and treatment plant analytics.

Most utilities end up combining several of these. A consultative assessment of your data maturity, staff skill set, and regulatory obligations is the fastest way to avoid buying software you will not fully use.

The two products solve different problems at different scales.

InfoWorks ICM is a citywide or catchment-scale simulation platform. It models complex interactions between sewer networks, rivers, and overland flooding, and is used for master planning, capacity assessment, and extreme weather scenario forecasting.

InfoDrainage is a site-level design and analysis tool. It produces sustainable drainage designs, sizes structures, and generates the documentation reviewers require for approval. It also integrates with BIM workflows, which shortens the distance between the drainage design and the wider civil model.

In short, ICM answers “how will the system behave under stress?” while InfoDrainage answers “will this design get approved and perform as intended?”

Yes, and this is one of the strongest arguments for standardizing on the Autodesk water portfolio.

InfoDrainage integrates with BIM workflows, allowing drainage design to move alongside civil and infrastructure models instead of living in an isolated file. InfoWater Pro is built directly on Esri ArcGIS Pro, so your existing asset geodatabase becomes the model foundation rather than a separate import exercise.

For organizations already invested in Autodesk infrastructure design tools or in enterprise GIS, the value comes from eliminating manual data handoffs. Every rebuilt model and re-keyed asset record is an opportunity for error and a cost your team absorbs quietly.

Several are, and the portfolio is designed to be cloud-connected across the board.

The Info360 family, which includes Info360 Asset, Info360 Insight, and Info360 Plant, is delivered as cloud applications. That means field inspection data, SCADA telemetry, and operational dashboards are accessible to distributed teams without VPN gymnastics or local server dependencies.

The modeling products offer collaborative workgroup capabilities so multiple engineers can build and manage models against shared data. The practical result is that a planner, a modeler, and an operations manager can work from the same version of the truth instead of emailing files back and forth.

AI-enhanced analytics in the Autodesk water portfolio work on patterns your team does not have time to find manually.

In operational analytics, that means anomaly detection across sensor data to flag leaks, blockages, or performance drift before they become service incidents. In asset management, it means risk scoring that helps prioritize which pipe segments actually deserve next year’s capital budget, rather than defaulting to age alone. In modeling, it means faster scenario evaluation when you need to test many what-if conditions against extreme weather forecasts.

AI does not replace engineering judgment here. It narrows the field so your engineers spend their hours on the decisions that matter.

Timelines vary with the scope of deployment and the state of your existing data, but the phases are consistent.

A typical implementation begins with a needs assessment covering current workflows, data sources, licensing structure, and team capabilities. From there comes software deployment and configuration, followed by data migration and model setup, then structured training for the roles that will use the tools daily. Ongoing technical support carries the deployment through the first project cycles, which is where most adoption gains or stalls.

A single-product rollout for a small engineering team can be productive within weeks. A multi-product deployment across a utility with legacy asset data requires a longer runway. The variable that most often extends a timeline is not the software. It is the condition of the source data.

Returns show up in four areas that finance teams recognize.

Capital efficiency improves when asset condition data and risk scoring drive rehabilitation priorities, so replacement spending targets the assets most likely to fail. Operational cost reduction follows from optimized system design, reduced non-revenue water, and fewer emergency response events. Regulatory compliance becomes less expensive when reporting is automated rather than assembled by hand each cycle. Resilience carries a harder-to-quantify but very real value: accurate stormwater and flood modeling reduces the exposure that a single extreme weather event can create.

The organizations that see the strongest results treat this as a workflow transformation supported by trained people and clean data, not as a software purchase. Adoption, not licensing, is what determines the return.