Hollywood Structural Detailing, Inc was founded in August of 1999 by Sean L. Johnson. Mr. Johnson’s desire was to create a high quality but economical steel detailing firm that could service the growing need for steel fabricators. By the story begin way before that.

As a teenager, Mr. Johnson was always interested in drawing and design, including buildings. While attending Baldwin Jr. Sr, High school, on the far westside of Jacksonville, FL in the 9th grade, an opportunity presented itself that would ultimately bring those desires together. It was in the 9 th grade that Mr. Johnson would tour the Westside Skills Center, a career center that allows student the ability to learn a career half of the school day, instead of taking elective course such as gym, etc. The other half of the day is devoted to regular school classes. On this tour one of the courses was drafting, where drawings by hand are created for fabrication and production. Mr. Johnson knew instantly that this was his calling.

Mr. Johnson joined the Westside Skills Center drafting program the following year (Sophomore) and excelled rapidly. Halfway through his Junior year he had amassed enough time and qualifications to get employed by a drafting firm. Vic Sanborn Detailing, Service (VSDS) hired Mr. Johnson and at the age of 16, he began learning about steel detailing. He stayed at VSDS even through the move of VSDS to be the onsite detailing firm of Liberty Steel, Inc (LSI), located in downtown Jacksonville, FL.

While at VSDS, in LSI, Mr. Johnson was mentored heavily by not only Vic Sanborn but also Ken Dougherty, in every component of structural steel detailing. He learned in depth about the AISC manual, AISC code of standard practice, and even was able to see fabrication and visit jobsites. Much of his detailing was industrial plants and paper mills with focus on galvanized components such as handrail, ladders, grating, and platforms with occasional chutes and hopper ductwork.

Mr. Johnson continued to work in the structural steel detailing field, even completing a few projects for himself until he was given an opportunity to work as a project manager for Canam Steel Corp in Jacksonville, FL in 1993. While working as a PM at CSC, he was mentored by Russ Rocco and learned all the components of the steel industry that steel detailing did not expose him too. As a PM he learned the many facets of steel fabrication, steel erection, purchasing, delivery and on-site problem solving. These were areas that he learned before computers were intricately involved and he was able to make the transition to computers rapidly. He was even tasked with making multiple trips to the home office in Canada to bring some of the software development back to Jacksonville.

The skills developed as a PM, along with his desire for excellence, honesty, and hard work, allowed Mr. Johnson to accel rapidly at CSC. After several years of working as a PM on multi-million dollar projects, Mr. Johnson was tasked to start the project management side of the joist division, and was named Senior Joist Project Manager. After successfully establishing the PM side of the joist division, Mr. Johnson was asked to work with the “Steel Plus” division which included detailing software development, and CSC customer relationships for the southeast region of the US. During all this time, his friendliness and youthfulness was attributes that made him liked by all those he worked with both at CSC and the people associated with the many projects he worked on. Many of his peers gave him the nickname “Hollywood” which stuck for the remainder of his time at CSC.

Around this time Mr. Johnson felt the desire to return to his first calling which was steel detailing. See a void in quality steel detailing, Mr. Johnson took all the abilities he learned as a detailer and PM and start a company that would service steel fabricators. In August of 1999 Hollywood Structural Detailing, Inc. was born.

Since then, we have worked with fabricators that have the highest quality on an array of projects. Many of them have trusted us with detailing projects for companies that are house hold names like Boeing, NASA, Frito Lay and Nestle. That’s why we can say at HSD we are “Drawn to Excellence”.