LAS VEGAS, Nev.—Oct. 31, 2017—The Collision Industry Conference (CIC) kicked off a meeting today at the Renaissance Hotel at the SEMA Show 2017.
The meeting began with remarks by CIC Chairman, Guy Bargnes, and a presentation from the Collision Industry Foundation on its disaster efforts with recent hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
The Insurer-Repairer Relations Committee created a brief presentation on “OEM Procedure Issues” that featured I-CAR’s Director, Jason Bartanen, discussing the I-CAR Reapirability Technical Support (RTS) portal.
The tool features information on many different car manufacturers and allows shops to tap into OEM repair procedures. It also includes information on 2018 vehicle technology and trends, GM company collision repair overview, understanding Volkswagen collision repair overview, etc.
Later in the discussion, presenters Matthew McDonnell, owner of Big Sky Collision, and Barry Dorn, of Dorn’s Body and Paint, addressed dash light certification.
McDonnell did a study last year in his shop on over 200 cars to test how many trouble codes were appearing in vehicles were accident related and repair related and what codes appeared when the vehicles left the shop.
He found that only 3.5 percent of codes were damage related when a vehicle came into his shop. But McDonnell added that codes that are unrelated to damage are a great way for repairers and insurers to build a relationship.
You take the information of the code and go to the insurer or bill payer and find a plan to go about such a situation, he says
“It builds trust,” McDonnell says.
After he started doing pre- and post-scans back in September 2016, found that while a car may show codes that aren’t related, once you disassemble, the codes can change.
After the panel discussion, Chris Evans, co-chair of CIC, updated the crowd on CIC's glossary initiative. The glossary of terms, which was last updated in 1997 with only 31 pages, now has a current draft on the CIC website that is 62 pages of updated information.
New sections include: general automotive part definitions, automotive scanning diagnostics, calibration and programming and a CIECA glossary.
The morning ended with an overview of the collision industry in Australia and New Zealand from the Consulting Editor of The National Collision Repairer, David Newton-Ross.
