The Intricacies of Damage Appraisal 

Creating a damage appraisal involves more than simply going through your estimating database to identify damaged parts and selecting repair, replace, align, diagnosis, refinish or sublet. While you need those categories, you also need to know which one to select to describe the “who, what, where, why and how” the repairs should be performed. To help bring some clarity to this, I am going to recap a few of my previous ABRN articles on damage appraisal.  

In “The need to reprogram damage appraisers,” I gave some examples of how damage appraisers can be vague in their documentation. Usually, this is because they know what they are thinking but do not complete their thoughts on paper. I offered three training steps that help move a damage appraiser to the next level:  

• Describe the repair operations as they expect them to be completed. 

• Take charge of the repair process by identifying each step required in the repair. 

• Ensure the damage appraisal communicates effectively to all parties connected to the repair. 

In “Do your damage appraisals communicate?,” I emphasized that just like a news article, a damage appraisal communicates to multiple individuals and must clearly explain the repairs being performed. If you think about it, you are like a news reporter in that you must relay the repair process using black words on white paper. Additionally, just like a reporter you must research the operations and validate the process using OEM repair procedures and other industry tools. A news reporter doesn’t let their word processor tell them how to write the story, and you shouldn’t let your estimating database tell you how a repair is to be performed. Just like their word processor, the estimating database is simply a documentation tool.  

Researching operations and validating processes is the most critical step in damage appraisal, so important that I identified key industry tools in “Improve your damage appraisal process”. Here, I explained the value of the estimating systems procedure pages, the Society of Collision Repair Specialists Guide to Complete Repair Planning, I-CAR’s Repairability Technical Support portal, 3M’s Collision Application Procedures, vehicle owner’s manual, Database Enhancement Gateway, OEM repair procedures and how photos help you illustrate repair requirements. All these tools allow you to complete the research up front to develop an accurate damage appraisal that tells the story of how the repair will be accomplished.  

I reviewed these three articles with you to help you understand the intricacies of a damage appraisal so you will be able to explain the who, what, where, why and how a repair will be accomplished. We must remember that our damage appraisals communicate a repair to a group of people who do not understand the process as well as we do and we must “report” effectively so that all have a complete understanding.