Our engineering work is driven by experience gained in real applications. It has two general aims: to define what "engineering" means when the raw material is "knowledge"; and to act as a conduit between theory and application - spurring the former and innovating the latter. We do this by seeking generic approaches to application challenges in the following ways:

• Streamlining theory for use. e.g. by producing "lightweight", pragmatic versions of theoretical systems which retain all of their formal integrity and most of their computational power but which have been adapted to suit standard styles of engineering.

• Fitting our systems to industrial processes. e.g. all current volumes of the Yellow Pages for British Telecom have an improved layout produced much more rapidly and flexibly through our knowledge-based layout language and algorithms.

• Building applications which are used profitably. e.g. the RAF Logistics Expert Provisioner is claimed by the RAF to save £30 million per year by preventing over-ordering of spare parts for aircraft.

• Making the world a safer place. e.g. we have developed systems for advising on hazardous waste disposal and providing medical advice in distant lands.

• Shaping engineering standards. e.g. we had a key role in producing the NIST Process Specification Language standard.

• Publishing in areas which matter to other disciplines. e.g. we have publications in mathematics, psychology, education, bioinformatics, simulation and environmental sciences as well as in the applied AI literature.