Construction giant EllisDon is building a state-of-the-art plant in Stoney Creek to make steel-ribbed offices and other building blocks that can be stacked like Lego on a construction site.

Up to a million square feet of prefabricated and fully furnished units such as student residence rooms and office floors will be assembled annually at the Hamilton plant when production ramps up late next year at EllisDon’s new subsidiary ED Modular.

Completed building units that come off the assembly line — including sections of a warehouse or dozens of bathrooms with installed fixtures and plumbing — can be trucked to a construction site, lifted into place by crane and fastened down in an afternoon.

About 200 jobs will be created at the 300,000-square-foot plant on South Service Road between Fruitland and Fifty roads.

“We like the idea of being in Hamilton because there are a lot of skilled trades people who are eager to do something new,” said Xavier Toby, director of prefabrication and technical sales for ED Modular.

Robitics and custom welding equipment is being installed now from partner Z Modular, owned by Zekelman Industries, a global leader in steel pipes. At Zekelman’s Harrow, Ont., plant near Windsor, sheet metal is turned into hollow tubes for international clients that will shortly include EllisDon’s Hamilton factory.

“Steel made in Hamilton will go down the road to Harrow and then comes back full circle to our plant in Hamilton ,” Toby said.

Though EllisDon has experience with modular construction methods, the work had been through subcontractors. ED Modular, established last March, is the company’s first owned and operated division devoted to the emerging construction technique.

To this point, modular has been considered “a boutique solution” useful in remote sites such as the Arctic, where skilled trades are in in low supply or in situations with tight timelimes, but Toby said his goal is to “bring the method to the mainstream.”

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