Training ground: Erie Insurance unveils massive new facility

AT A GLANCE Features of the new training center include: - Portable models that simulate rooms of a house demonstrate proper and improper construction techniques. - One model demonstrates actual fire damage. - The model home features dozens of cutaway sections, showing wiring, materials and plumbing behind the walls. - One room of the house is built to be flooded.

It began three years ago with a modest suggestion.

Erie Insurance had been buying up old homes in its eastside neighborhood, and Greg Paige and Chris Zimmer, both vice presidents with Erie County's second largest employer, wondered if the company could re-purpose an old house on East Sixth Street into a learning laboratory for claims adjusters.

The specifics of that idea would ultimately be discarded.

But the vision that grew from that spark is due to be unveiled today -- and it's a long way from the original plan.

The company has invested millions in the new Erie Insurance Technical Learning Center, a 52,000-square-foot facility on East Seventh Street between French and Holland streets that Erie Insurance believes is unique in both size and scope in the U.S. insurance industry.

"This is state of the art," said Chip Dufala, executive vice president of services for Erie Insurance. "We are not aware of anyone having a facility of this caliber."

Behind the brick and steel facade is a 14-bay auto shop with alignment equipment, classrooms, paint booth and prep areas, where adjusters can brush up on auto body repair skills or learn the latest about aluminum body panels.

At the west end of the building is something more unexpected. Inside the training center, which adjoins the company's new parking garage, is a two-story 3,000-square foot house built to train adjusters about property damage.

This gleaming, cavernous building, announced in July 2013, has a simple purpose: It's a training ground for claims adjusters and would-be claims adjusters from across the Erie Insurance footprint, which includes 13 states and the District of Columbia.

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Training ground: Erie Insurance unveils massive new facility