Jun. 7--The history of Erie's CMI Energy, a part of Zurn Industries Energy Division for years, can be traced to Presque Isle Foundry, founded in 1840.

It's a company that lays claim to a particular distinction in the engineering world. Its engineering certification stamp, granted by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, is the second oldest in the nation.

But the modern incarnation of this old Erie firm isn't living in the past.

The company, a division of Belgium-based Cockerill Maintenance & Ingenierie, makes its U.S. headquarters at Knowledge Park, where a project management team of about 80 people, including an engineering staff of about 40, oversees the design and construction of electrical power plants around the world.

Just a little over a decade ago, David Boyce, an engineering student at Penn State Behrend, arrived there as an eager intern who took copious notes.

He returned last summer as vice president of engineering to the company's 20,000-square-foot space at 5300 Knowledge Parkway.

The company had changed its name in 2004, following a bankruptcy sale by Erie Power Technologies.

But it was still focused on the construction of combined cycle power plants, a type of high-efficiency plant that generates about two-thirds of its power from gas turbines.

The remaining third is made from a heat recovery steam generator designed and built under the direction of CMI.

It's an important and valuable component, Boyce said. A typical combined cycle power plant might cost between $400 and $500 million. Boyce said his company's portion of a power plant typically costs between $30 million and $50 million.

"We specify the design, design it internally, and procure material from places like Thailand, Korea, China and Erie," Boyce said.

CMI arranges for the shipment of those components to sites around the world, including Russia, Argentina and Ireland, and then oversees the construction.

"We do two or three projects like that a year," Boyce said.

Boyce would like to see that number climb and might soon be in a position to help do something about it.

Boyce, a Pittsburgh native who returned in the summer of 2008 to the company where he interned and worked between 1998 and 2000, will soon be moving to Belgium to assume the position of executive vice president of engineering.

"My role in the future is going to be very similar," Boyce said. "But I am going to have responsibility not just for Erie, but for Belgium."

He stresses that CMI, a global company with about 4,000 employees, bought Erie Power Technologies for a reason -- to acquire technology and expertise that it didn't have.