Shane Madison laughs about a comment  he made in a Business Record  article when he helped start Pinnacle  Construction Group in 2005. “Our  intent is not to be big,” the company’s  president said at the time.”We would be  quite happy doing $250,000 to $3 million  projects.”

A year later,however, the company is  working on about $30 million in construction  projects. It has grown from  three employees to 13, and last year it  exceeded its first-year revenue projection  by 400 percent.

“It got way beyond our expectations,”  Madison said.”We were actually  able to exceed our three-year profit  goals by two times our first year.”

One of the main coups was landing  the $17 million Ingersoll Square project,  the second-largest condominium  project in Des Moines, in Pinnacle’s  first year. Not only is it on the highly  visible corner of Martin Luther King Jr.  Parkway and Ingersoll Avenue, but also  the warm weather has allowed workers  to make a lot of progress, which  people can see as they pass by.

Pinnacle expects to have a model  unit completed by April and its first  phase of development, 138 residential  units, completed in November. The  next phase will likely create retail and  office space along Ingersoll.

Other projects, such as the Okoboji  Grill restaurant on Southeast 14th Street  and the University Place office building  in Clive, also have given the company  great visibility, which has led to additional  business.

Madison also attributes the company’s  success to it being both a contractor  and a developer. Thirty to 40 percent  of the company’s projects are selfdeveloped,  Madison said, including its  latest project, a retail and office building  in the booming commercial district on  Eighth Street in Altoona.

Pinnacle’s success has led it to  double its 2,000-square-foot headquarters  on Grand Avenue by expanding  into the office space next door  this month. Madison also has hired  the company’s first business development  person to increase its sales, and  he expects he could hire another five  employees in 2007.

“We shook up and restructured our  staff at the end of 2006, and we did that  to position ourselves to double in revenue  again,” he said.

In addition to the fast growth on  the construction side, Madison is  quickly adding to the list of businesses  he owns. He bought a carpet-cleaning  business, Pro Team, at the same time  he started Pinnacle, and last summer  he split the company’s emergency  water removal service into a separate  company, Pro Dry.

Because carpet cleaning is an easier  business to enter,Madison said,Pro Team  makes enough to cover the overhead.  He sees emergency water removal as the  profit side of the business and believes  that by creating a separate business, he  will create a niche in the market.  Madison just hired a general manager  to run Pro Dry and expects the  employees who work for both companies  to increase from six to 10 by 2008.

Madison also is considering starting  a business that would provide  several services to companies that are  moving to a new office, such as creating  new business cards and transferring  phone lines.

Although Madison expects to continue  to expand his existing businesses  and add new ones, he does not know  what direction that will be or how far  that growth will go.

“I’m very careful not to have the attitude  that we’re going to take on the  world,” he said. “I think we’re going to  let it happen as it happens. Right now,  that’s happening quickly.”