It is not your grandmother’s mobile home — not by a long shot.

Rick Holliday’s Factory_OS facility on Mare Island, having recently closed a deal on the historic Building 680 — the Nimitz Avenue “industrial cathedral” vacated by Blu Homes — makes pre-fabricated dwellings, like they do, but that’s pretty much where the similarity ends, he said.

“Blu Homes specializes in single family homes, and we focus on multi-family homes, done in pieces and assembled on site,” Holliday’s business partner Kevin Brown said. “This allows for better quality control, because our assembly-line process eliminates having various contractors crawling over each other. It’s faster and more efficient — creating at least a 40 percent construction time savings.”

Building an apartment building this way also creates less neighborhood impact and costs less, too, making it possible to develop housing that is 20 percent more affordable than traditionally built ones, Brown, 35, said.

Also, in many cases, the Factory_OS manufactured homes are stronger than their traditionally built counterparts, Brown said, explaining that they are created by connecting various-sized, pre-made spaces, so, there are double walls, ceilings and floors throughout the structure. This also works to better sound-proof the dwellings, he said.

Even so, general contractor Larry Pace, 59, said, “quite a bit of architectural freedom” is retained.

“People think mobile homes are boxy, but we can do (nearly anything) with the exterior articulation that can be done with a traditionally built building. We have revolutionized the modular building industry,” he said.

This assessment doesn’t seem to be hyperbole, if the $30 million or so order of 300 units for Google to create affordable housing for its workforce, is any indication. Not a bad first order, for a start-up, as reported in Foxbusiness.com in June. At 63, Holliday, a married father of two and grandfather of one, said he’s created three successful businesses in his life and believes this one is destined to be a fourth.

Holliday says he will have officially taken possession of the Mare Island building on July 1, and plans to start production of Google’s order in the fall. The expectation is that Factory_OS will employ some 300 people including 160 to 180 builders and 20 to 30 management types, including engineers, draftsmen, procurement agents and general managers.

Part of Holliday’s vision involves building a stable, local workforce — so the entire operation is under the auspices of a single union, he said.

“We’re creating a family here, where we will pay good salaries with union benefits, and, most importantly, an opportunity for people to be able to learn trades they’ll be able to take with them wherever they go,” he said.

A Bay Area native, Holliday said his first big project — The Charles Hotel, in 1983 in Vallejo — was a nonprofit, affordable housing development.

He’s been developing multi-family housing for 35 years, he said.

Watching the way things happen in the construction industry as the economy shifts, made Holliday think outside the box, he said.

“What happens in a recession, is the labor market shrinks as people leave and costs rise,” he said. “So, I saw this and felt if we don’t start thinking about building housing differently, we are going to have a serious problem, so, the idea of building off-site came to me.”

Having a factory in which housing is built means fewer “nomadic” workers, driving hours each way to job sites and then waiting for the next project to come along, he said.

“This is 300 stable jobs, more steady work, good paying jobs, close to where people can afford to live — making it possible to create better value and a better product in the end,” Holliday said. He also hopes to help provide second chances for people hoping to change their lives, he said.

These are just a few of the many reasons why Vallejo is the perfect place for Factory_OS, he said.

“It’s exciting,” he said. “I’m glad to be in Vallejo. I’ve missed it. It’s a great place. I was going to (do this in) Oakland, but, three months ago, someone called about Blu Homes’ factory being available. This building found us, and it’s perfect.”

Building 680 — the Navy’s former machine shop — is being transformed into 20 building stations, each with a different function, where the home modules will be built and receive their first of three inspections. State and local officials provide the other two, on the site where the building is installed. The finished product is transported by ship or truck to its final destination, he said.

Vallejo Mayor Bob Sampayan welcomed Factory_OS to the city.

“This facility will create jobs, drive economic activity and put Vallejo on the leading edge of helping California address its critical housing shortage,” he said.

Contact Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at (707) 553-6824.