They differ wildly in their technological abilities and willingness to share information. During the life of a project, in an atmosphere of cost and time pressure that is always competitive and occasionally adversarial, they exchange hundreds or thousands of documents, many of them created by incompatible computer programs. By leveraging the Web's universally interchangeable file formats, affordability, and instant availability, project teams sidestep incompatibility issues, costly paperhandling, and slow turnaround. And if things go smoothly, they may even walk away liking each other. Like commercial Web pages, private Web sites for individual projects are information repositories, message clearinghouses, and business transaction hubs.
Web browsers provide the software gateway for exploring such project networks.
The simplest PCN functions as a repository for documents, such as drawings, memos, and meeting minutes. These are accessible, once the password is entered, to project participants. Clients, for example, can view CAD drawings online, even without having CAD software on their computer. Some PCNs add the ability to pan and zoom across CAD files or to annotate and redline these drawings. These extras necessitate helper programs, usually available for free, that are downloaded by the user and plugged in or automatically served to the browser.