In 1904 the company, then called PW and CS Meik, was appointed by the British Aluminium Company to engineer the Kinlochleven Hydro-electric Scheme project in the western Highlands of Scotland.
The production of aluminium is dependent on a large and continuous supply of cheap electricity and is therefore well adapted to hydro-power.
Parliamentary approval was sought and gained for the project in 1905 and later the same year production began on the dam, power station and aluminium factory.
William Halcrow, who had joined the company in the early 1900s, gained his first experience of hydro-electric work on this project as assistant resident engineer.
The scheme involved the construction of the Blackwater concrete gravity Dam. It was built at an elevation of over 305m in rugged and inaccessible terrain and therefore 6 km of concrete aqueduct and nearly 13 km of steel pipe had to be constructed.
The Blackwater dam only rose to a height of 27m but its length of 948m made it one of the longest dams then in existence and it is still the longest in the highlands.
The dam was built without the use of any mechanical equipment and the workforce worked hard and long hours in squalid conditions. One of the men, Patrick McGill said, "Only when we had completed the job... did we learn that we had been employed on the construction of the biggest aluminium factory in the kingdom."
The aluminium production from Kinlochelven was to prove an invaluable asset in the two world wars that followed.
In recent years the smelting works has closed and been mostly demolished, although a few buildings remain. One has been transformed into a major mountain activity centre and includes the world's highest indoor ice-climbing facility.
The power station now produces electricity for the aluminium smelter in Fort William, supplementing the supply from the Lochaber Water Power Scheme. Any surplus energy is sold to the national grid for public supply and so the dam and associated works remain in use.