PALMETTO -- The 4-foot by 8-foot building panels, wrapped in plastic and lying on the manufacturing room floor, represent a potential boon for Steve Lewis’ business.

They also represent a step forward for 2,000 Iraqi families who need low-cost, energy-efficient housing in a new desert community being developed about 10 miles outside of Bagdad.

The panels will be picked up Thursday by a hauler and shipped out of the Port of Savannah, Ga., headed to a contractor in Iraq, who -- with the help of Lewis’ contractor -- will build the first of 2,000 homes.

The houses will have two front doors, according to Iraqi custom, one leading into the kitchen for women and children and the other into the reception area or living room for men and guests.

What will make the homes unique are the structural insulated panels that will make up their exterior walls and roof. The steel-framed panels are built using a patented system in which a fiberglass mat covers the panels, which are then injected with a polyurethane foam. The process provides energy efficient buildings that are air tight, easy to construct and hurricane and earthquake resistant.

Lewis, who has been an architectural designer for more than 20 years, is hoping his $60 million contract will be the stepping off point to push his small manufacturing facility tucked away in a Palmetto industrial park to greatness.

“It is my dream project,” said Lewis, who stumbled into manufacturing when Platinum Advanced Technology in St. Petersburg, which was manufacturing the panels, decided to stop because of the economy.

“I had been using the panels in my housing designs and giving them feedback. It turns out I bought and resold 20 percent of the panels they were manufacturing,” he said.

So Lewis, the owner of Lewis Consulting Services, formed SIPS Worldwide LLC, and invented a press to speed up the panel-making process.

“Instead of making one panel at a time, we can now make six,” Lewis said. “We are using the same principles but we reinvented the manufacturing process.”

The connection for the Iraqi contract came from a construction company in Virginia that knew of Lewis and his new building process. He has made contacts around the globe including Cameroon, Nigeria, Peru and the Dominican Republic.

Lewis has hosted visitors to his plant recently from Haiti and will be hosting next week a United Nations representative from Peru.

The panel building process involves two vats of chemicals blended together to form polyurethane. That mixture is injected into the framed panels with a computerized system and becomes a composite with the fiberglass cloth.

Locally, the county has used the panels to build a concession stand and maintenance building at Palma Sola Park and another maintenance building at Buffalo Creek Park.

John Barnott, director building and development services with Manatee County, watched the building go up at Palma Sola and was impressed.

“It’s a great system,” he said. “Everything is prepared at the factory, everything fits in tracks and braces and goes up so fast.”

He did a little personal testing of the product at Lewis’ manufacturing plant when he jumped up and down on a panel. His 6-foot-2-inch, 300 pounds body barely made an impression.

Joe Fountain, a local carpenter, still sings the praises of the polyurethane panels he used to build his Palmetto duplex in 2008.

“I couldn’t be more happy with the product,” he said. “I was gun shy at first because my experience has been with lumber and concrete.” Fountain was sold when he hit a panel as hard as he could with his hammer and only put a small dent in it.

He lives in the upper floor of his overall 3,000-square-foot duplex and his 1,500 square feet usually has an electric bill of $130 a month.

“It only took two people to erect the panels and we had the exterior walls downstairs up in six hours.”

After construction, he literally had a handful of leftover material.

“Material wise it is slightly higher than lumber, but cheaper than concrete,” Fountain said. On average, though, Lewis said the panels cost $2.90 per square foot more to construct than concrete block.

If the Iraqis like what they see, the rest of the 2,000 home order will be shipped. In the meantime, Lewis is busy coming up with prototypes for future uses of the foam.

One would enable homeowners to retrofit existing houses to save on energy costs.

If his plans come to fruition, he hopes his six-figure revenue producing company will expand enough to allow him to add 100 more to his four-person staff.

“I’ll either be really rich or really poor by the end of this,” Lewis said.