Our Story
Built Different.
Harnessed Compulsion started as a refusal to accept mediocre work. It's still that simple.
15+
Years in the trades
3
Disciplines under one roof
100%
Jobs stood behind
0
Corners cut
Background
Where It Started
Forty-seven years of maintaining things will teach you something most people never learn: the difference between a fix that holds and a fix that just looks like it holds. Harnessed Compulsion was built on that distinction.
The background spans entertainment industry production — grip, electric, rigging, set construction — through information technology infrastructure, real estate management, and custom fabrication. Three decades of hands-on work across industries that don't forgive sloppy.
Now it's time to make things. The Special Effects Trailer is the physical expression of that — a mobile fabrication and handyman platform built to go where the work is. The scale changes. The standard doesn't.
How We Operate
What Drives Us
Precision Over Speed
We don't rush work to hit a deadline that compromises the result. We set realistic timelines and we hold them.
Straight Talk
If a design won't work, we say so before we start. If a job is outside our wheelhouse, we tell you that too. No surprises.
One Standard
Residential or industrial, small run or large structure — every job gets the same level of attention. There's no such thing as a job too small to do right.
We Stand Behind It
If something isn't right when we hand it over, we make it right. That's not a policy — it's how we operate.
What We Bring
Capabilities & Credentials
Three disciplines, one shop, one standard. Here's what we're equipped to handle.
- MIG, TIG, stick, and flux-core welding
- Structural and ornamental ironwork
- Custom architectural millwork and cabinetry
- Precision metal fabrication and forming
- Commercial and residential construction
- On-site and in-shop capability
- Prototype and short-run production
- Certified weld inspection available
Administrative Manager, I.A.T.S.E. Local 99 Health Trust
We Did The Impossible
1995 — PresentHow It Started
In or before 1995, visionary senior members of I.A.T.S.E. Local 99 formed a 501(c)(9) non-profit health trust to solve a problem that had no clean answer: if you have no traditional employer-employee relationship, how do you get health insurance? Stagehands work show to show, gig to gig. The system wasn't built for them.
The Instructions
We were told to run a Section 125 reimbursement-type plan — annual, use-it-or-lose-it. Keep the difference. Come back when you have a million in reserves and you can self-insure. So we did exactly that.
Years Go By . . .
Time measured in years goes by. The reserves build. We go back for the follow-up meeting, ready to take the next step toward self-insurance. And we are told, in so many words:
You'll shoot your eye out.
The market had changed. Self-insuring was now off the table. The goal we had been given — and spent years working toward — was no longer the goal. Classic.
We Did It Anyway
We solved the problem. Long before the ACA marketplace existed, long before anyone had a framework for covering gig workers, I.A.T.S.E. Local 99 Health Trust figured out how to get real health coverage to workers who didn't fit the traditional mold. The trust now provides full health insurance through Select Health for qualifying members, and a reimbursement plan for those who don't qualify — a two-tier solution built from scratch. We have board meeting notes from the era where the sitting President of the United States announced he was going to solve healthcare. We basically noted it and kept working. We didn't wait.
Administrative management of the trust continues to this day.
Ready to Talk About Your Project?
Tell us what you're building. We'll tell you straight whether we're the right fit.