Pinnacle Brochure by North American Constructors Journal

Pinnacle Commercial Development, Inc.:

Premier provider of turnkey project solutions Pinnacle Commercial Development, Inc. of Point Pleasant, N.J. works in the retail, restaurant, hospitality, health care, light industrial and storage sectors across the country. Written by: Kevin Doyle Produced by: Stephen Marino

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rom the outset, a laser-like focus on controlled growth allowed Pinnacle Commercial Development, Inc. of Point Pleasant, NJ to realize its vision of becoming an elite provider of turnkey solutions. Established in 2007, Pinnacle is a member of the Retail Contractors Association (RCA) and has grown to become a highly regarded national presence, generating $95 million in revenue in FY2015 while providing integrated services across the retail, restaurant, hospitality, health care, light industrial and storage sectors from concept to closeout. “All of our growth is through repeat business. We started out with one or two clients that we geared our operations around, performing for them. Those clients went to their architect and their architect [asked] ‘Who is that firm that did those three stores?’ and then they’d introduce us to another retailer,” explains Pinnacle coOwner and Vice President Dennis Rome, a 15-year industry veteran. Among those earliest clients were Family Dollar and JoAnn Fabrics and Crafts.

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| Pinnacle Commercial Development, Inc. | 1 “Our growth has been with Family Dollar. It started out with two stores a year and now we’re doing 15. One of the guys at Family Dollar left and went to Dollar General, so now we have a parallel program we’re doing with Dollar General. That’s just smart growth,” Rome says. Flexibility and a willingness to adapt have helped Pinnacle to stand out. “We’re a young company, so we just try to be willing to learn to

| Pinnacle Commercial Development, Inc. | 2 change our ways if we have to. When you get stuck in your ways, you stop growing,” Rome observes. “We function very much like a large construction management firm. Both [co-Owner] Mike Kogan and myself stay involved in every project. We try to be very hands-on and approach projects as if we’re the owners. We try to be very proactive. We see what issues come up and put the correct solution on it. “We truly value partnerships. We want this to be mutually

beneficial for all parties. That goes from our clients to all our subcontractors. We are long-term oriented. A lot of our competitors forget this is a service business. We want our relationships to last long after the job is finished,” Rome stresses.

Sharp Operations

Pinnacle does the majority of its work along the East Coast, from Maine to Florida, but Rome – who oversees construction and operations – notes “we work nation-wide, from Indiana to

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| Pinnacle Commercial Development, Inc. | 4 Vermont to Florida to Texas. And we do some hospitality work in the Caribbean.”The company is equipped for projects of all types. “We do every project from a 500-square foot yoga fit-out to four-, five- and six-story ground up buildings in New York City. We just built three of the first stores on the East Coast for Billy Beez, a new indoor concept for kids,” says Rome. “Throughout the year we’re not just doing one-offs. We didn’t do one Family Dollar [last year], we did 15. We didn’t do one JoAnn’s store, we did 21. Your business is going to grow based upon making a fair amount of money and by turning over the right jobs amongst 15-20 jobs, not just one,” he continues. Pinnacle typically presents clients with alternatives while providing them with tailored solutions. That could range from identifying an effective lighting solution being used at a self-storage project and suggesting that a client such as Family Dollar consider it to suggesting to a client that a single vendor providing lighting solutions on multiple projects might be worth investigating for

“We truly value partnerships. We want this to be mutually beneficial for all parties. That goes from our clients to all our subcontractors. We are long-term oriented … We want our relationships to last long after the job is finished.”

- Dennis Rome, Vice President cost savings or special programs it may offer. “Our goal is to add value throughout the construction process. We do this by offering a wide-variety of services from site analysis/feasibility, value engineering, material selection to inspection and closeout,” Rome says. “We judge ourselves by our clients success.” Anticipating trends and staying ahead of the curve is crucial. When investment analysts anticipated that JoAnn’s would decline, the Pinnacle team that worked with

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JoAnn’s prepared to take on other projects. And, when the selfstorage market heated up, Pinnacle was ready to take advantage.“The self-storage industry in New York City is booming. These are large projects that can be $20 million a piece. We started building self-storage again when nobody else was doing it, so now we’ve become the go-to guy,” Rome says. Pinnacle prefers to have dedicated teams working with specific clients and mixes in younger workers to study and

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learn from senior employees. The company holds a number of events throughout the year to reward employees for a job well done, such as a day at the Jersey Shore, backyard barbecues and holiday decorating competitions.

Utilizing Technology

The company uses software such as Electrical Bid Manager™ and Procore project management tools. The latter allows each team member to log into a cloud-based server and review specific project information at a moment’s notice.

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| Pinnacle Commercial Development, Inc. | 8 “The self-storage industry in New York City is booming. These are large projects that can be $20 million apiece. We started building self-storage again when nobody else was doing it, so now we’ve become the go-to guy.” - Dennis Rome, Vice President

“We try to stay on top of advances in the industry to make sure sub-contractors get drawings as soon as possible and for our clients to stay in touch with what’s upcoming,” says Rome. The same goes for product advancement. “All of our clients have all adopted Energy Management Systems and Lighting Control Systems, so we stay informed as to what’s required for them and how they operate. Everybody has got LED lights, so we’re in tune with that technology.

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| Pinnacle Commercial Development, Inc. | 9 We stay on top of product advancement,” Rome notes. Site Superintendents maintain project specific electronic folders that can be accessed and updated with job information as needed from the main office. Pinnacle representatives regularly attend trade shows and spend time networking with clients because, Rome says, “hearing what people have to say helps you grow; it’s important to know what your clients are thinking.”

Safety Measures

Employees attend safety seminars

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on a regular basis and are also provided with webinars by the company’s insurance provider, The Travelers. “Safety is a major issue in the Northeast, specifically in New York City. Traveler’s will send out a webinar every two or three weeks on topics that relate to our projects, such as 15 to 20 minutes on crane safety,” Rome says. “In New York there is a whole set of safety protocols to follow. We try to keep everyone in the company from the receptionist to the senior executives in tune with what’s going on safety wise.”

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| Pinnacle Commercial Development, Inc. | 11 Benefits of RCA Membership

qualifying its members annually.

“If we’re doing a West Coast project and we’re not familiar with the difficulties or challenges of working in that area, we’ll speak to a few of the companies out there,” he says.

“They look at our financials, they look at our experience, they call our references and they inspect our license to make sure we can work in that state. They do that every year. They re-evaluate to make sure this is a company they want working with them. We all have our niches but everyone in the top end of the industry is a member of the RCA,” says Rome.

Rome is an avid supporter of the RCA and its built-in support system, which consists of the best in class when it comes to retail contracting nationally.

He finds the Association’s annual SPECS convention to be especially beneficial. “I look forward to SPECS every year, sitting down with those guys and talking. You’re sitting there saying ‘it would be great to figure out a way to do this, or I’m finding a hurdle in the industry’ and you figure it must be our just our company that’s not getting it. But, when you sit down with 50 or 60 companies and you’re listening to everybody, you realize it’s a trend across the nation. So it’s nice to bounce ideas off people around the country and see how they’re handling a problem,” Rome says. He appreciates RCA’s efforts to go the extra mile while vetting and

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And, true to its name, Pinnacle is proud to stand among them.

| Pinnacle Commercial Development, Inc. | 12 “I look forward to SPECS every year, sitting down with those guys and talking … it’s nice to bounce ideas off people around the country and see how they’re handling a problem.”

- Dennis Rome, Vice President