Fountain of Wealth

PBS&J's double-digit growth for the past five years is due in part to opportunities created by the U.S. water market, which likely will continue to be lucrative for the company. John R. "Woody" Wodraska, the firm's national director of water resources and the former head of both the South Florida Water Management District and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, estimates $600 billion in water-related expenditures on the horizon by governments and private companies tackling everything from water-supply planning to new water-supply projects such as desalination plants. "There's a huge opportunity because government is outsourcing so much work," says Wodraska. "There's as much money on the policy side as the engineering side."

In Florida, PBS&J is part of the Army Corps of Engineers' management support team helping implement the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. In California, the firm is mapping more than 13,000 miles of levees, canals and flood-control features.
"Politicians used to run from infrastructure spending, but when (California) Gov. Schwarzenegger ran on a platform of being the infrastructure governor and won, that was a harbinger of the future," says Wodraska. "It bodes well for PBS&J and the consulting industry in general."

In the firm's target markets throughout the Sun Belt, factors like security concerns, crumbling infrastructure and dramatic population growth are increasing government spending in the transportation sector and the firm's other specialty areas, too. In addition to seaports, airports, highway design and toll facilities, the firm is working worldwide on smart-transportation projects such as managed lanes and open-road electronic toll-collection systems.
Future subsidiaries may be more management than engineering focused -- such as PBS&J Builders, the company's new construction-management unit. It also is working on product development, such as a right-of-way database program called Road Tracker.