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Collision Industry Conference debates alternatives to initial estimate writing |
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Tuesday, 01 May 2007 |
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Page 3 of 3
Database Task Force reports error
Many of the 12 committee and two Task Forces CIC has operating this year did little more at the Atlanta meeting than outline their plans for the upcoming year.
David McCreight, chairman of the newly-formed “Business Management Committee,” for example, said that committee will spend the year trying to outline a more streamlined way for handling the repair and claims process, and comparing it to the current process to determine what costs savings and other benefits would be possible for shops, insurers, vendors and consumers.
Jim Ryan, chairman of the Estimate Practices and Procedures Committee, said his committee will work with the estimate system providers to determine how pop-up window or other prompts about non-included operations could help improve estimate accuracy.
“The second thing we’re going to work on is defining the necessary steps and processes for a repaired panel as opposed to a new, undamaged panel,” Ryan said. “A lot of people don’t really understand the differences there. We want to work on defining and communicating that.”
But the CIC Database Task Force did have some accomplishments and progress to report on in Atlanta. Lou DiLisio, who coordinates the task force, said the group had recently worked with one of the estimating database providers on a “pretty significant error” in their system.
“We’re not really sure how long it took it to address it, but the bottom line is for (that) period of time, which was at minimum 90 days, the repair industry had to deal with the time that was in that system and unfortunately lost a lot of money,” DiLisio said. “We feel those are the types of things that need to be disclosed to the industry, both when they are uncovered and when they get resolved.”
DiLisio, however, declined to provide the name of the estimating system provider nor details about the error, saying the task force is giving the provider an opportunity to address the issue.
“But the fact of the matter is, we see these things and identify them,” DiLisio said. “And we’re just not going to put up with them. They are going to have to answer to the industry as to why those types of things take that amount of time to get (corrected).”
He also said the task force has worked successfully with CCC Information Systems to change that company’s estimating system so that refinish times for bumper covers are based by default on painting the covers off the vehicle. Until this spring, the system defaulted to removing overlap based on the bumper cover being painted on the vehicle, which is rarely done.
DiLisio said the CCC system still deducts some overlap because it presumes the bumper covers are painted in a continuous process with the rest of the vehicle. So the task force was working with paint companies to show CCC that because paint additives are needed for bumper covers, it is not a continuous process and that overlap should not be taken.
DiLisio concluded the task force’s report at the annual meeting by reminding the industry that the estimating systems are merely guides.
“And they are guides for undamaged new cars with OE parts,” DiLisio said. “We know that. Unfortunately, one of the abuses in the industry right now is that those guides are being shoved down everybody’s throats as a bible. Therefore, there’s more scrutiny of the guides to make them as accurate as we can possible make them.”
John Yoswick is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon, who has been writing about the automotive industry since 1988. He can be contacted by email at
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