Figure 1: Newark's $1.6 Billion New Schools Program.

Some folks in PB hold the view that buildings are something that you add to a transit project (stations and depots) or to a power station (amenity buildings). The capability and technical expertise in our firm to design, construct and manage building projects far exceed this scope, however. PB’s building projects encompass a wide range of market sectors that are represented in this edition of PB Network, including.

• Commercial infrastructure: mixed use and office buildings
• Social infrastructure: hospitals and schools (see also PBNotes, May 2005)
• Transportation infrastructure: stations and support structures
• Government infrastructure: defence and other departmental institutions.

Around the globe, PB’s engineers, architects and managers are actively engaged in delivering world-class projects. Here are some notable examples:

• In Asia, PB staff members (in some cases when they were with other firms) have worked on the development of 50 percent of the world's top 20 super high-rise buildings.
• In Europe, PB is engaged in one of the longest running and most successful partnering programmes in Europe with blue chip client British Telecom (page 6).
• In the U.S., PB has been involved in managing the six largest schools programs, such as the Newark project (Figure 1).

Our teams design and manage complete building projects for clients along with offering a discreet range of technology solutions, some of which are covered in articles in this issue.

Advances in information and communication technology combined with an enlightened approach to knowledge sharing allow our building groups around the world to offer best practise to our clients. We hope that this edition of PB Network will help to advance that knowledge sharing. We had an exceptional response to our call for articles, and the editors would like to thank the authors for assisting in the production of this milestone issue. PB Buildings is a reality.

Peter Collins, Guest Editor , PBNetwork #60; Technical Director, Parsons Brinckerhoff Ltd.