This is where we build technicians from scratch. Zero experience walks in, and electricians, plumbers, and HVAC pros walk out. Everything in this lab is functional. They can tear it apart, we can plant faults, and they can fail safely here instead of in a customer’s home.
@officialchadpetermanTranscript
But we are in the Peterman Top Tech Academy lab. This is where we can train technicians from the ground up. So no experience coming into the trade for the first time. We can train them to be electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, HVAC installers. And then we also use this facility for a lot of continued ed in the trades. There's always something new. You're never going to have seen it all. And so we're able to bring people in that are on our team in a controlled environment and work on the things that they need to work on. Or level a technician up that's looking for a promotion and go over the things that he needs to get better at. I think the other important piece of this lab is it's all functional. So this is everything that they would ever see out in a customer's home is here. They can work on it. They can tear it apart. They can put it back together. We can put faults in different places. We can do all sorts of different things to test their ability to work on it, to diagnose it, and to hopefully take care of a customer in the end.
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