Pairwise balanced designs with block sizes \(6t+1\) (Q1112034)

In this paper we construct pairwise balanced designs (PBDs) having block sizes which are prime powers congruent to 1 modulo 6. Such a PBD contains \(n=6r+1\) points, for some positive integer r. We show that this condition is sufficient for \(n\geq 1927\), with at most 31 possible exceptions below this value. As an immediate corollary, we prove that there exists a pair of orthogonal Steiner triple systems of order n, for the same values of n.