There’s a new name over the door at one of Cranbrook’s best known engineering firms, but it’s still business as usual says the man that’s operated the company since 1984.

Armstrong Engineering and Land Surveys, which has been involved in many major projects in Cranbrook and the surrounding area for 30 years, is now a branch of McElhanney Consulting Services Ltd., the oldest engineering and land survey consulting firm in Western Canada.

McElhanney, based in Vancouver, has more than 700 employees and 20 offices in the four western provinces as well as one office in Indonesia and has completed projects in more than 70 countries around the world.

“They’re a very well-known company province-wide as well as western Canada and they were a very good fit for us because we both do land surveying and engineering,” said John Armstrong, the former head of Armstrong Engineering and Land Surveys.”

A 100th anniversary celebration was held May 19 at the new McElhanney branch in the old Armstrong office at 34 – 11th Avenue south and Armstrong said he was happy to see the change. “It was time for me to be less involved and now with McElhanney we’ll be able to do more projects and bigger projects because of our increased size and expertise.”

Since becoming a division of McElhanney in November 2009, the local office has added one new civil engineer, Mihaela Radu P. Eng., and despite the slow recovery since the recession of 2008, Armstrong is confident the recovery will continue to build locally.

“It’s looking good. I can see only positive things for the East Kootenay. We have a sound economic base with the coal mines, forestry, CPR, college and the hospital and I think recreation developments will continue to add impetus to economic development in the area.”

With McElhanney also comes new expertise and equipment such as a mobile mapping truck mounted with 14 digital cameras that can greatly speed up development and mapping work in the digital age. The imagery provided by the cameras is accurate to one cm and is invaluable to engineers, mapping and GIS specialists, city inspectors and urban planners.

McElhanney is expected to carry on with Armstrong’s tradition of working on major projects in Cranbrook and the surrounding region. Some of these include Cranbrook’s airport runway and terminal expansion, the Kimberley Alpine Resort Paralympic Centre and Conference Centre, the Creston Recreational Centre and the College of the Rockies expansion now nearing completion.

Chris Newcombe, McElhanney President spoke at the celebration Wednesday and said his company was glad to be taking over “a local company with a broad history in Cranbrook.” Newcombe went on to say McElhanney itself had a history to be proud of too.

“Pride in being independent and employee owned, which is increasingly rare for firms of our size. Pride in our diversity and our local presence in many communities and pride in the benefits to society of our projects including the recent tsunami reconstruction in Indonesia.”

McElhanney has won many awards over the years including most recently for the Golden Ears Bridge in Vancouver and the work the company did on the Prince George ice jam last winter.

Now 100 years old, McElhanney recently chronicled its proud history in a book by award-winning Canadian author Katherine Gordon called “Maps, Mountains and Mosquitoes: the