Few places in the country are growing as fast as Osceola County, Florida. Located just south of Orlando, the county's population grew 23.9% between 2020 and 2025, to an estimated 481,718 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.¹ New neighborhoods, commercial corridors, and roads have followed, along with a steady rise in work zones, lane closures, and projects that overlap in the same communities.

For the county's transportation team, the harder problem was not the construction itself. It was keeping everyone on the same page about it. Contractors, internal departments, utility partners, and public information staff all needed to know what was planned, where, and for how long. Residents needed that same information before they reached a closed lane, not after.

At APWA’s 2026 Public Works Expo in Houston, Richard Nasrawy, P.E., Director of Construction for Osceola County, and Abigail Drescher, MA, Customer Success Manager at Causeway Technologies, walked attendees through how the county rebuilt that process. Their session, "Managing Massive Growth Through Digitization: A Success Story," laid out a model other fast-growing agencies can put to work.

Why the Old Playbook Wasn't Enough

Growth in Osceola comes from every direction. Local development is only part of the picture. Tourism and regional commuter traffic layer on top of it, and the I-4 corridor reconstruction adds major construction pressure to the same road network. County commissioners have made road improvements a top priority, adopting a five-year Capital Improvement Plan in September 2025 that totals more than $1.4 billion, with over $1 billion dedicated to road projects.²

Planning a single closure meant coordinating traffic control plan reviews, utility work, contractors, field crews, and public information. Much of that ran on manual processes and systems that didn't talk to each other. The result will sound familiar to anyone in public works: overlapping work zones, departments in silos, updates sent through the wrong channels, and residents who found out too late.

For residents, frustration often came less from the disruption itself than from the uncertainty around it. What is happening, where, and for how long? When those answers are unclear or inconsistent, trust erodes quickly.

Defining Roles and Responsibilities

For Osceola County, integrating the technology wasn't the most difficult part. The real work was mapping the workflow from start to finish and defining clear roles and responsibilities for everyone involved, from contractors and the Construction Engineering and Inspection (CEI) team to county project managers, public information staff, and leadership. With those responsibilities in place, the county could connect every player through one shared system.

Building One Source of Truth

Osceola County implemented Causeway one.network, known locally as the county's Traffic Management Advisory System (TMAS), across three connected steps.

• Plan and review with Plan Share. Contractors and internal teams submit traffic control plans digitally through one standardized intake process. Reviews are consistent, plans are complete before work begins, and manual tracking has dropped away. So far, 103 of 105 maintenance-of-traffic plans have been approved, with a 98% approval rating.³
• Coordinate with Traffic Management. Every planned work zone and closure countywide lives on a single map, with lane restrictions and timelines set in advance. Teams can spot overlapping projects in the same neighborhood before they collide.
• Communicate with Live Link. Field crews activate a closure with a tap on a phone or desktop. That update flows automatically to Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze, so drivers see accurate routing around active work zones within minutes. Residents don't need to download a new app. The information reaches them in the tools they already use.

TMAS is also open to the public without an account, and the live map is embedded directly to its own website.

Results the County Can Point To

In under a year, Live Link closure updates generated an estimated 1.6 to 2.4 million driver interactions across Google Maps, Waze, and Apple Maps, putting verified closure data in front of the drivers who need it most.⁴ All county transportation projects now run through the connected workflow, not just a handful of widening jobs, and the public works and community development departments are onboarding next.⁵

The broader shifts matter just as much. Residents learn about planned work before it begins. Messaging is consistent across departments and contractors. Real-time updates reflect actual field conditions. And internal teams plan closures earlier instead of reacting to complaints after the fact, managing a growing workload without scaling staff at the same rate.

A Playbook for Other Agencies

Osceola's experience offers practical lessons for any agency facing rapid growth:

• Early visibility into planned work is the foundation of effective public communication.
• Standardizing plan submission improves both efficiency and accuracy.
• Real-time updates significantly reduce public confusion and complaints.
• Cross-department collaboration is essential in high-growth environments.
• Technology has to support the full ecosystem, from internal planning and execution to the navigation apps drivers rely on.

The larger takeaway is that communication is part of project delivery, not an afterthought. A connected workflow works when every step has a clear owner, and public trust is won or lost in the tools people already use. As Osceola County continues to grow, it now has a repeatable model it can extend to new departments, partners, and projects as they come online.

Read the full Osceola County customer story to see how Plan Share, Traffic Management, and Live Link work together.

Sources

¹ U.S. Census Bureau, QuickFacts: Osceola County, Florida, Population Estimates, July 1, 2025 (V2025). https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/osceolacountyflorida
² Osceola County Board of County Commissioners, Resolution No. 25-107R, FY 2026-2030 Capital Improvement Plan, adopted September 4, 2025. https://www.osceola.org/files/assets/county/v/2/government/budget-and-financial/budget-documents/2026/resolution-25-107r-fy26-30-cip_accessible.pdf
³ Causeway Technologies internal data.
⁴ Causeway Technologies internal data.
⁵ Causeway Technologies internal data.