PB Innovations

In 1885 William Barclay Parsons hung out a shingle at 22 William Street in New York City, starting a small consulting practice in railroads and canals. Parsons embraced bold, exciting new ideas—and the list of his innovations is extensive. In 1900, he chose cut-and-cover construction for the New York subways, to minimize the length of stairways in the stations, in contrast to the deep tunnels of the London Underground. (This was before the development of escalators.) In 1910, he boldly undertook construction of the Steinway Tunnels under New York's East River from a mid- river shaft, opening up four tunnel headings and shaving two years off the construction time. And in 1910, he laid out the Cape Cod Canal, the first sea-level canal to join two bodies of water with markedly different tidal regimes, and backed it with extensive hydraulic analysis.

From such roots PB has grown into an international firm with over 10,500 employees. We've prospered for well over a century by following Parsons' example—and staying at the forefront of a constantly evolving profession.

One of the most brilliant examples of PB technological innovation process was the development and refinement of steel shell, immersed tube, and tunnel technology—culminating in the historic Detroit Windsor Tunnel, completed in 1930 and still called "one of the great engineering wonders of the world." To this day, it is the only vehicular international sub aqueous border crossing in the world, and the second busiest crossing between the U.S. and Canada.

The list of "firsts" PB claims is enormous—and spans almost every major market sector. An abbreviated list includes:

• First wide-scale use in U.S. of cut-and-cover construction
  New York City Interborough Subway
  
• First tunnel crossing under the Nile River
  Cairo Metro Line 2, Egypt
  
• First heavy rail transit system in Puerto Rico
  Tren Urbano
  
• First U.S. concrete swing bridge
  West Seattle Low-level Swing Bridge, Washington
  
• First New York State concurrent, bi-directional HOV lane
  Long Island Expressway, Nassau County, New York
  
• First paved link between the cities of Pasto and Popayan in Colombia
  Pan American Highway
  
• First combined-cycle gas turbine power station in the Philippines
  Santa Rita Power Station
  
• First transmission line in Southeast Asia
  Java Transmission System, Indonesia
  
• First U.S. military air base converted to commercial aviation
  Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Texas