BUSINESS STANDARDS
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Business Standards > Articles

Beyond repair

14 Feb 2007
Topics: Automotive, PAS 125, Kitemark®, Thatcham

Driving is a risky business. On average, there's a crash every six seconds on Britain's roads and five million cars are involved in accidents every year. Statistics for the UK in 2005 (released in September 2006 by The Department for Transport) paint an equally stark picture: 3,201 fatalities on Britain's roads, 28,954 people seriously injured and 271,017 total casualties.

This parallels a significant economic impact: in 2005, insurance companies paid out £5bn to mend damaged vehicles. And the burden of making sure that cars and light commercial vehicles are restored to the highest standards of safety and roadworthiness falls on the shoulders of the country's accident repair body shops - to date, a largely unregulated part of the auto industry, with no recognized way to demonstrate that they're living up to those standards.

At the same time, repair methods for vehicles change with each technological advance. New manufacturing techniques and materials, coupled with skills shortages and varied compliance criteria imposed by supply chain partners and trade bodies, make the job more difficult from year to year.

In effect, the industry has reached a tipping point. There is a clear need for a robust cross industry standard to ensure the efficient, effective and safe repair of motor vehicles as a platform for business improvement.

The Thatcham BSI Kitemark® scheme for vehicle body repair aims to redress the balance and give consumers, insurance companies and businesses a clear sign that these companies are doing the right thing in the right way.

This groundbreaking scheme is backed by Britain's top motor insurers and is the resultof a unique collaboration between BSI and motor insurance repair research leaders Thatcham. Underpinning the scheme is anew BSI British Standards' Publicly Available Specification - PAS 125 - which sets outtechnical requirements for vehicle body repair, the first specification of its kind.

"We called on BSI as a professional standards body to develop this with us and it's been a joint project," says Jason Moseley, Thatcham's director of quality and business systems. "We also wanted independent certification for the scheme. Thatcham is well known within the industry but we're not as well known as BSI's Kitemark®. By working together, we've played to each other's strengths."

A universal industry standard for vehicle body repair has been long overdue. Until now, the industry had been subject to a bewildering array of approval schemes and guidance, witha number of organizations setting their owndifferent controls for the industry.

"The problem is that each of them had their own standards," says Moseley. "There were question marks on how well they were audited and how technically well written they were. There was also the need to reduce the cost of paying for multiple audits and, in terms of time, of having several audits a year. The industry wanted one standard."

The need to provide a common agreed standard with cross-industry support and third-party certification was seen as increasingly urgent for another reason: corporate liability and the associated risk of litigation. If a repair is carried out wrongly and it results in subsequent loss or injury, it's not just the workshop that's liable - it's anybody who had a say in choosing that workshop in the first place.

When a private car is involved in an accident, it's usually the insurance company rather than the motorist that decides where the repair work is carried out - and that could put insurers in the firing line if something goes wrong later. In the case of company cars, the decision on where a vehicle is repaired might be influenced not just by insurers but by other work providers too, including fleet managers, vehicle leasing companies and even employers themselves. All could face negligence claims if unsafe repairs are carried out.

"Insurers have a responsibility to ensure that their policyholders' vehicles are put back on the road in as safe a condition as they were before the accident," says Mike Pearson, new product development manager with BSI Product Services, the product testing and certification division of BSI Group. "Every employer who gives a company car to a staff member is under a duty of care and so is every vehicle leasing company and fleet car operator. The business community is at risk if the repairs are not done to set standards."

The right road

To earn the Thatcham BSI Kitemark®, vehicle body repair shops must prove that they conform to tough new standards set down in PAS 125. These include strict requirements that focus on skills, repair methods, equipment and materials. In addition, workshops must demonstrate that they have repair process management controls in place to monitor repair activities. All these elements are assessed by independent BSI inspectors and must meet stringent benchmarks if the valuable Kitemark® is to be awarded by BSI.

"This is not us saying body repairers don't know what they're doing," says Moseley. "The majority of them do a very good job. PAS 125 provides a framework for independent Kitemark® certification, so they can prove they're doing the right thing. And if there are any unscrupulous traders, they will be excluded from the industry."

No business or individual is immune from the process of law, of course, but a vehicle body repair shop that has earned the Thatcham BSI Kitemark® will already have proved its ongoing commitment to quality and its ability to conform to rigorous technical and managerial standards agreed by the industry. That in itself reduces the risk of unsafe work being carried out.

And although the scheme is in its early stages, it is hoped that workshops holding the Kitemark® may pay lower public liability insurance premiums.

For work providers, such as insurancecompanies and fleet managers, directing damaged vehicles to Kitemark® body shops offers the reassurance that work will be carried out in accordance with an industry-wide standard, with technical processes that have been assessed by a trusted third party. This also fits in with due diligence strategies intended to limit corporate risk in the event of litigation.

PAS 125 will be subject to review after12 months and thereafter every two years ?or sooner if new needs emerge. The ability to incorporate the "breaking news" of new technical developments within the specification is seen as increasingly important bybody repairers, trade associations and insurers because it's not just legal changes that are shaping the body repair industry, it's therapid evolution of cars themselves [see"All change" box on previous page].

Reaching the standard

Reaching consensus within any industry is a time-consuming business, but PAS 125 was achieved in record time - from the commencement of the project to finally printing the specification took just under nine months.

"There was a will and a desire by thegroup to work together in order to get agood solid standard out there that could be used by the entire marketplace," says Quincy Lissaur, senior business consultant with BSI Professional Services, the team within BSI British Standards that brought the stakeholders together. "We were originally afraid that because there are a number of trade bodies and associations that all compete heavily within this particular industry, we might run into some consensus building problems. But they were all willing to work together in order to discuss the technical content of the PAS."

Promoting the new standard - and making sure it is adopted as widely and as swiftlyas possible - is the role of both Thatcham and BSI.

"It's about educating the market place and bringing standards up," says Scott Hanney, BSI's key account sales manager for the Thatcham BSI Kitemark®.

"We've got a number of the large insurance companies now making it a requirement for their own body repair shops and we've got all the big companies on board. There's a huge amount of interest in this from insurers, work providers, fleet companies and manufacturers right the way down to single-site independents," he adds.

For body repair shops capable of meeting the rigorous conformity tests associated with PAS 125 - which include site inspections and process auditing - obtaining Kitemark® certification is likely to take between four and six weeks. With insurers demanding Kitemark® conformity from their repair networks, it's a challenge bodyshops can't afford to ignore.

"It's a positive message that is going to change the industry for the better - and for the safety of consumers and the motoring public at large," says Pearson of BSI Product Services. "It costs less than £2,500 in the first year. For a typical bodyshop, it's about £1 a repair job in terms of showing you're serious about safety. It's all it costs to save lives."

>CASE STUDY: Thatcham in brief

The Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre - now better known as Thatcham - was formed by British insurers in 1969. It is independently run and carries out research targeted at containing or reducing the cost of motor insurance claims while maintaining safety standards. This includes research and training in collision repair. Best known for its crash test facilities, Thatcham provides vital expertise, products and services to insurers, motor manufacturers, equipment manufacturers and suppliers.

>CASE STUDY: All change

Mild steel, the raw ingredient of car production for more than a century, is being supplemented by high-strength steels, aluminium and man-made composites. These present major challenges for body repair shops: welding aluminium and high-strength steels, for example, demands specialist equipment and facilities. Repairing a modern vehicle in such a shop requires increasingly specialized skills, tools, jigs and materials. The scope of the Thatcham BSI Kitemark® recognizes three classifications or types of repair. These are: "Cosmetic"; "Structural - steel" and "Structural - aluminium and composite". (Most of the body shops used by insurers are likely to come within the middle category.) As such, PAS 125 will form a vital benchmark for the industry as it accommodates the changes in material technology.

For more information, visit:
www.bsi-global.com/feb07thatcham