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Letter to the Editor

Standard(s) Deviation?

As the industry talks about collision repair standards, questions as much as answers tend to dominate the discussion.

Ask those in the industry about “repair standards,” and a surprising number of the comments end with a question mark rather than a period:

• Who would develop the standards, and on what would they be based?
• How would they be codified, communicated, and enforced?
• Can the whole process be funded and handled in a way that prevents even the appearance of “special-interests” influencing the standards?

Though the questions are many, the discussion is certainly continuing in many venues. The Automotive Service Association (ASA) said it began researching ways to implement standards in the industry four years ago. Almost the entire agenda of this year’s International Bodyshop Industry Symposium (IBIS) was dedicated to discussion of standards. And several Collision Industry Conference (CIC) committees are tackling the topic from different angles; the CIC Industry Standards Committee, for example, will hold a day-long meeting on the topic in Las Vegas on November 2, the day prior to the next scheduled CIC meeting.

Jeff Patti of Amica Insurance, who chairs that CIC committee, said he believes there is a clear need for formal, industry-recognized repair standards.

“There’s no measurement out there currently to measure a repair by,” Patti said. “There’s no baseline.”

But a panel discussion of the topic organized by another CIC committee demonstrated some of the challenges – and questions – any effort to create those standards faces. The panel, which included representatives of shops and insurers, was asked to discuss a trade practice proposal that stated no one should “encourage or demand” that a shop use “an inappropriate repair practice.” That would include, the proposal read, a repair practice that is “inconsistent with OEM repair standards,” one that would lower the vehicle’s resale value compared to if it had been repaired to industry standards, or one that would “threaten either the integrity of the vehicle’s safety systems or its management of any future collision-related energy transfer.”

The panel almost immediately took on the issue of whether “industry-accepted procedures” could be the benchmark rather than only “OEM repair standards.”

“But who crash-tests someone else’s procedure,” panelist Mark Allen of Mercedes-Benz said. “Are there other procedures? Yes. But have they been crash-tested, and are the people who developed those procedures willing to accept the liability?”

“My question is: Are all OEM procedures crash-tested?” George Avery of State Farm responded.

In the past Avery has been among those who have argued that procedures approved by other reputable sources, such as I-CAR or Tech-Cor, should be deemed acceptable. State Farm, he said, has at times researched sectioning procedures well ahead of when such procedures are eventually approved by an automaker.

"It turns out sectioning was the right thing," Avery said of such situations. "There's a whole period of time where people who are responsible for the repair could possibly make a pretty good decision. I don't mean any disrespect to the OEMs, but it just seems to me... we don't want to take away from the expertise of the people who fix cars every day and are responsible."

But Aaron Schulenburg, executive director of the Society of Collision Repair Specialists (SCRS), balked at the idea that an “industry-acceptable” practice should really become a “standard.” He said that until the demonstrations in recent months raising significant concerns about non-OEM bumper and structural parts, many insurers if not shops, considered their use “industry-acceptable.”

“Using non-tested parts that hadn’t been confirmed to be safe or the same as their counter-part was industry acceptable?” Schulenburg asks. “Is that acceptable for us to establish a standard that would allow that practice to be okay? I’m not comfortable with that being the standard.”

Schulenburg acknowledged that the OEMs may not have all the answers. They do not, for example, have procedures for all repair processes. But given that both the automaker and insurer will likely wash their hands of any responsibility if a shop does not follow the OEM guidelines, those existing OEM guidelines should be considered the standard by all in the industry “before we start moving on to the areas in which they don’t exist.”

Patti said his committee has pretty much followed that model, initially trying to compile all the standards that actually already exist. But he believes that at some point an independent third-party organization will need to oversee the final development and implementation of the standards.

“Its mission would be to establish and manage collision repair standards developed by collision industry stakeholders,” Patti said at CIC this summer. “That’s everybody in this room. Everyone will have a say in what goes on. This won’t be limited to any one particular segment.”

But Schulenburg again raised concerns about involvement in setting repair standards by those who do not repair cars nor hold the final liability for those repairs.

“It’s ultimately the repairer who would abide by the standards,” Schulenburg said. “When you have ‘stakeholders,’ there are special interests involved. There’s a lot of skepticism out there about abiding by repair standards that are developed by other entities with vested interest in how they want us to act.”

CIC administrator Jeff Hendler agreed.

“Developing standards for the collision repair industry does not need to involve insurers, database providers, or anybody else but those people touching that car,” Hendler said. “The body shop person already is standing side by side with an insurer who is saying, ‘Yeah, I know that’s the right way to repair the car, but we won’t pay for it.’ That’s BS.”

But Patti and others said the standard development process should follow the guidelines established by American National Standards Institute (ANSI), the body that essentially sets standards for standards development. Part of what ANSI requires, he said, is consensus of all affected stakeholders. Part of why the standards should be overseen by an independent organization, he said, is to avoid influence by special interests.

“This has to be a consumer-driven organization,” he said. “We have to look out for our mutual customer.”

Scott Biggs of the Assured Performance Network is a proponent for the development of formal repair standards. He helped craft the CIC trade practice proposals that call both for an inter-industry effort to build the standards, and a prohibition on insurers, for example, pushing a shop to use a repair procedure that violates those standards.

"We could, with standards, eliminate half the argument and half the confusion and a lot of the inefficiency," Biggs said.

But ironically enough, Biggs’ closing thoughts about repair standards end with yet another question mark.

"The question to the industry: Do we have the appetite?” Biggs said. “Is it now time for standards?”   o

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