Pinnacle Construction

Top of the game

Finding out where your interests lie is the key
to professional happiness and success

Pinnacle Construction Development Group founder Lynlee Altman began her career by earning a degree as an electrical engineer, following in her father’s footsteps. While temping her way through college, she was fortunate enough to get a job as an office assistant with Gilbane Construction in Providence, RI. During the dull times, she found a friend, a mentor, who made it his business to explain the construction industry to her and show her project guides, and how a business could be run. It was fascinating, she says, both from a “how buildings get built” point of view and for the insight into how a construction company should work. With her engineering degree in hand, and after a stint at Philips, the medical equipment manufacturer, where she specialized in software quality control, Altman earned an MBA. The next step: she went into marketing at Keithley. But always in the back of her mind was starting her own business based on the things she learned at Gilbane.
In 2000, she brought it to the front burner and started Maintenance Solutions, a specialist in exterior building maintenance. It was a hard time to start a new company, what with dot-coms bursting and 9/11 looming. Some work came from preparing buildings to be idle until the economy improved, but it wasn’t living up to her dreams.
She sat down, thought it out for a year, and created a bigger dream, putting all her resources behind her answer to the question, “Where in the market?”
Her answer: to go after the unique projects, the challenging ones. “I had to rediscover what I wanted, what about the industry excited me,” says Altman. In 2005, Pinnacle Construction Development Group was born to serve these larger and more
complex construction projects.
One key to this move was Altman’s partnership with Robert Zerbe, vice president, who brought his experience from New Era Builders. He is in charge of the details, monitoring the operating and labor costs of each project and watching over the scheduling to bring jobs in on time and on budget. His experience includes the NASA Glenn Research Center, the NASA research fuel testing facility, SYSCO Foods warehouse in Cleveland and the interior of 25 of the floors of the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Cleveland.
Pinnacle’s jobs now, says Altman, are never the same, and there is always something new to figure out. “It is never the same job twice,” she says. “That means we do a better job, and thus we have a happier customer and stronger commitment. The new key is restraint, not chasing after any possible project, and it is ironic that when we realized this is when our business started to grow,” she adds.
The name Pinnacle was chosen for its sound, a fresh, but classic sounding one as well, which showed that the firm was now at the top of its game. Future directions for Pinnacle are based on the many strengths of its staff. BXM

It takes a team

At Pinnacle, quality work is a given,
and its workforce is why

According to founder Lynlee Altman, Pinnacle Construction Development Group is built on three principles:
1. Strong teamwork among employees, which encourages people to interact over projects, to improve themselves, to feel at home while out in the field.
2. A family orientation, based on what Altman observed in her work at Gilbane: to create an office environment in which even kids can feel at home when visiting.
3. A commitment to Cleveland, a city she loves and wants to raise her family in. And the city’s comeback time is now, she says. “We have to build the infrastructure we need here to get going.”
Pinnacle now has 10 employees, with those coming into the company bringing their own skills, ideas and contacts to build the company. “We hire the best people we can find, and so we have relatively little turnover,” Altman says. The firm even asks subs for input on who they’d like to work with, who in the industry has a really good reputation as a colleague. “Our people make the job of sales easier,” she says. “They are just excellent.”
This success all revolves around quality, quality that is built in from the start rather than the product of testing for trouble spots. Altman’s work at Philips showed her it is better to do it right the first time, both with critical medical equipment and with construction, Other colleagues also brought their own experience to bear on how to make sure any finished project is a quality one.
It’s one reason the firm likes government work. With public agencies, Altman says, “you always get the support you need to do it right.” And having big, visible clients lets owners see Pinnacle and get comfortable with it and its expertise, she adds.
Altman does not rely on Pinnacle’s status as a female-managed enterprise. “We are in those programs, and they help open doors,” she says, “but at the end of the day if you don’t perform, it doesn’t assure success.”
True to its mission, Pinnacle takes on far more than just basic construction, adding design/build capabilities by marrying design and construction work for single-source service for owner/developers, or construction management, where it acts as a seamless integrator of the work of many contractors. BXM

Unique projects

Looking for a challenge

Pinnacle Construction Development Group looks for those projects that are one-of-a-kind, those with unusual challenges or safety issues. This could mean a hazardous environment, public safety concerns during construction and minimal interruption to adjacent areas, or it could mean projects with atypical engineering specifications or the unknown factors of historic preservation and renovation.

Some key projects:
Cleveland State University:
Work includes the interior renovation of Rhodes Tower’s third floor library into a study facility, minimizing the effect of the work on surrounding areas; interior renovations of the Mather Mansion in an occupied building where time was of the essence; and the renovation of a 30,000-sf parking lot, with traffic flow redesign and new lights and gates.

Lincoln Electric:
The Electrostatic Discharge Facility in an old cafeteria space, whose scientific nature called for advanced products and procedures. Flooring was static dissipating, and the room also needed a clean room ceiling. An interlock system was constructed at the entrance.

Lockheed Martin:
Security for this Akron facility was removed from exterior fences to individual buildings, with 10 door replacements and 20 upgrades. The deadline for the project was inflexible for security reasons, and the work was done in a few weeks, on schedule, with Pinnacle one of a large number of companies whose work was coordinated to get the job done.

Reliable Office Complex:
This design/build project had Pinnacle working directly with the owner, architect and end-users to bring in a building that was on time and on budget while meeting all programming goals. A 7,800-sf office and 5,000-sf warehouse house a variety of tenants.

A big wind

Pinnacle is working on the $4+ million removal of an outdated 1944 Altitude Wind Tunnel at the NASA Glenn facility in Cleveland in order to make room for the agency’s massive new overhaul. The 31-ft in diameter, over 300-ft long tunnel was built to test aircraft engines, but later converted to test engines in a space-like environment. The tunnel’s two steel rings need to be removed and recycled, while the entry into a building is capped and active lines for compressed air, steam and condensate is moved. Pinnacle is working with Fowler Electric, Soehnlen Piping, Norris Brothers (structural steel) and 21st Century Concrete on this, as well as with Brandenburg Industrial Service out of Chicago on the demolition end.
The project ‘s major challenge is one of safety. Because of the sheer size and mass of the project, demolishing one of the NASA’s largest wind tunnels is very tricky. And it is a unique project–wind tunnel demolition is not something the average company does everyday. It is a first for the firm, and it was hard to know where to start, says the firm. With other projects, everything is there right in front the crew. But the contractor just broke the project down into pieces, like any other job. After a great deal of planning, the project is entering its active phase and adding to Pinnacle’s expertise. BXM