As the energetic Alan Parsons Project “Sirius” (also the Chicago Bulls’ theme song) played through the speakers, the Inter-Industry Conference on Auto Collision Repair (I-CAR) opened its 45th anniversary National Meeting Friday evening general session with its “Leading Forward” theme at the Lincolnshire Marriott in the Chicago suburb of Lincolnshire, Illinois, April 5-6.
I-CAR CEO and President John Van Alstyne referred to I-CAR’s mission statement: “The I-CAR Vision is that every person on the collision repair industry has the information, knowledge and skills required to perform complete, safe and quality repairs for the ultimate benefit of the consumer.”
He said the statement has been refined since he began with I-CAR 14 years ago to include all stakeholders in the ecosystem, such as glass installers and ADAS service providers, which also include dealerships that perform ADAS calibrations.
The industry seems to be responding. Van Alstyne reported the number of shops trained this year is up 6.5%, and the total number of students was up 17.5%. The total number of Sustaining Partners and Training Alliance partners has also grown.
The organization has a number of short-term and long-term goals, he said, but “Leading Forward” reflects its number-one goal and strategy to “establish I-CAR as the recognized leader and industry subject matter expert on vehicle repair, technology and educational programming.”
It includes focusing on providing more technical advisory services to the industry including but not limited to providing expertise on subjects such as planning for investments for equipment and facilities and insights into emerging technologies. It could also potentially mean working with OEMs on designing for repair.
Van Alstyne, who in the same speech announced his retirement at the end of 2025, said the organization will continue to change along with the market and technology.
“We need to be nimble, flexible, and innovative as we think about how we work,” he said.
“The operating infrastructure at I-CAR has really evolved over the past 14 years that I've been here. It doesn't matter if it's IT platforms or HR processing or financial systems, or how we deliver training, how we schedule training, everything is fresh in the I-CAR world today, and working I think a lot better than it ever has.”
Got Techs? Recruiting and Retaining Talent
Dara Goroff, I-CAR vice president, planning and industry talent programming, spoke in Saturday morning’s general session. Although technician poaching is rampant, she said, with technicians often jumping ship for as little as a $.50/hour raise, money is not the driver one may assume.
In fact, in its survey of nearly 840 collision repair technicians, conducted with the Society of Collision Repair Specialists with Ducker Carlisle late last year, job satisfaction was found to be derived not so much from pay as much as it is being acknowledged of superior job performance and otherwise appreciated by one’s employer.
“And not only that, they want to grow you because they see your great potential,” she said. “That is when you create retention.”
Arianna Sherlock, senior director of marketing, spoke about the Collision Careers marketing initiative, which she compared to the successful ‘90s “got milk?” ad campaign.
“We are trying to do for you what the California Milk Processor Board did for the milk industry,” she said. “Nobody sees our campaigns and comes to I-CAR, right? They're coming to your schools, to your shops, and that is exactly why we are investing in this and why we're in this game.”
Similar to that campaign, Collision Careers is consumer-focused to reach an audience “that we’ve never really been after before.”
The collision repair industry has “an awareness problem,” she said.
Not only are students making decisions about careers before high school, she said; they don’t make them in isolation.
“You have to have his parents on board; you have to have a teacher or a counselor who's introducing the concept and encouraging them.”
Putting RTS in the Technician’s Hand
The Repairability Technical Support was brought to life in 2014, Van Alstyne said, to make sure the industry had access to the repair information that is critical to fixing cars correctly. RTS access is complimentary, and the next development of that is the new RTS mobile app for technicians.
Scott VanHulle, manager of Repairability Technical Support (RTS) and OEM technical relations, noted that technicians often don’t have ready access to a computer during the workday, but they do have a cell phone.
The app allows access to technical information and articles, and it can save the technician’s role to speed access to, for example, that information relevant to a structural repair technician.
“We couldn't really reach the technicians who often need that information at their fingertips because they're working on the car today and they have a question. These are the people we need to help get that information out to as quickly as possible, because if the repair planner did a great job, that's one thing. But also if they run into something that was missed or they didn't understand and they have a question today, we can help answer that.”
