Jan. 13, 2010, PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. — Bud Center, administrator of the collision industry's Database Enhancement Gateway (DEG), will be leaving his post, and a replacement for Center is currently being sought.

The announcement of Center's department from the DEG, an initiative by several industry bodies to improve the accuracy of collision repair estimates, came jointly from Ron Pyle, president of the Automotive Service Association (ASA), and Aaron Schulenburg, executive director of the Society for Collision Repair Specialists (SCRS) on Thursday. Schulenburg and Pyle urged participants of the Collision Industry Conference (CIC), where they made the announcement, to spread the word about the open position. Pyle said he expects the position to be filled by the end of February, and that Center has agreed to stay on in some capacity until that time.

"We're interested in having a good number of candidates, so distribute [a forthcoming press release_notes on the opening] widely," Pyle told the CIC.

The DEG is a joint initiative of the ASA, the SCRS, and the Alliance for Automotive Service Providers. Center had been with the DEG since April 2009, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The profile for the DEG Administrator position is available on the DEG website, www.degweb.org/News_and_Updates. Applications can be submitted to resume@degweb.org by Jan. 28.

It was notable that Pyle and Schulenburg made the announcement jointly, as earlier in the day CIC members had decided in a hotly contested, 99 to 98 vote, to hold their fall meeting at SEMA trade show in November rather than NACE Expo in October. Pyle is the president of ASA, which owns NACE, and he had urged CIC members to hold its fall meeting at NACE in Orlando, Fla. Schulenburg is executive director of the SCRS, which has thrown its weight behind SEMA by debuting its Repair Driven Education Series there in November.

Schulenburg earlier in the day had thanked CIC participants for voting to hold the fall meeting at SEMA.