PARIS — KBS Building Solutions has shut down its Waterford plant and laid off 25 workers in a move that is being called temporary.

“It’s just for the winter. We’ll reopen again on April 1,” General Manager Ray Atkisson said on Monday.

The company will move 20 people from the Waterford plant to its Paris headquarters to work with its existing 155-member work force on several major Massachusetts commercial housing ventures.

Atkisson said that the lack of commercial building work in Maine and overhead costs in the Waterford facility, including a propane heating system that costs $700 per day to operate, were major factors in the decision.

“There’s not much happening in the state of Maine,” said Atkisson of the lack of work for the few remaining modular home builders in the Oxford Hills and surrounding area, including KBS and Keiser Homes in Oxford.

While KBS has several contracts with Massachusetts, including a 238-unit apartment complex in Lunenberg and 75 units in Hopkinton, the commercial building business has virtually dried up in Maine for modular builders, he said.

An orthopedic unit at a hospital in Calais and other projects in Ellsworth and Brewer are up for bid, but Atkisson said he has already been told by an official involved in the Ellsworth project that bidding would be virtually fruitless because the architect has panelizing — a construction method that uses remotely manufactured walls that are assembled on site — in mind and not modular building.

Atkisson said the person told him that “the way MaineHousing now has the bid process, it sort of puts your modular mentality at a disadvantage.”

Atkisson said this type of thinking has put the modular building practice into a slump in Maine.

“The project is a three-story, the same as in Massachusetts. I don’t know why they won’t let us participate,” he said of the bidding process.

Despite the problems in Maine, Atkisson said the company is still doing strong commercial business in southern New England, particularly in Massachusetts, where the company has been prominently featured in the 2010 Greater Boston Builder/Architect magazine for its work there.

“KBS is still strong. There’s still plenty of production,” Atkisson said.

In late 2007, KBS Building Systems purchased the former Waterford Homes property in Waterford from a Massachusetts firm. Waterford Homes, a two-year-old, high-end manufacturer, defaulted on mortgage and loan payments and closed down in 2006.

The 17-acre property, with a 30,000-square foot manufacturing plant at 947 Waterford Road, was reopened for business early the next year with some 20 new hires, boosting KBS’s production by as much as a third.

But officials said the poor economy forced the plant to shut down about six to eight months later and to lay off its employees in that plant. It reopened again in 2008, but shut down temporarily when heavy snow caused the roof to collapse.

Last year more than 60 jobs were lost and the Waterford plant was shut down again when production lagged. But this spring, the plant was reopened and about 40 to 50 employees rehired when new commercial projects were landed and expected to bring the company through to 2011.

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