A group of collision repair shop owners in Virginia are pushing a unique shop licensing mechanism that may be the solution to licensing issues nationwide.
Instead of being a fee-based system, or a license that suddenly puts shops that don't meet certain standards out of business, the Virginia proposal would use a tiered approach. Like the typical shop licensing approach, the proposal would set standards for shops, but instead of a single standard, the Virginia Auto Body Legislative Committee (VALC) has suggested different levels of standards for different shops.
"Our goal is to have shops graded. There would be a class A shop, a class B, a class C," says Barry Dorn, vice president of Dorn's Body and Paint in Mechanicsville, Va., and director at large for the Society of Collision Repair Specialists (SCRS), who is working with VALC. "Class-C shops would handle things like a door ding, a bumper ding. B-class shops would be someone that could do hoods, fenders, door skins, maybe a quarter panel. A-class shops would be the ones that could do the more complex structural and frame repairs."
The different classes would help ensure that shops that are not currently set up to be A-class shops are not forced to upgrade or to go out of business. "We are not here to say that large or megashops are the only ones who can make it. There are a lot of small shops, medium shops and large shops that qualify for this today," says Dorn. "There are also a lot of shops out there that shouldn't be doing these repairs that are doing them."
Doug Conner, president of VALC, and owner of four Conner Brother Body Shops near Richmond, Va., points out a wide range of benefits to this licensing plan, particularly the effects he thinks it will have on labor rates. "The concept is that if you take your car to a grade C shop and they're only equipped to do the minor things the insurance companies will say, 'You're a grade C shop, so this is the rate you're due," says Conner. "We want to level the playing field so that shops are being paid what they are worth according to what they invested."
In addition to making labor rates more appropriate, Conner thinks the graded approach will benefit consumers by helping them differentiate between shops. Other issues that could potentially be affected by graded licensing are environmental — "part of the grade will be on how they dispose of their waste and their paint booth operation," says Conner.
Technical school curriculum and student ability would also improve under the proposal, because, according to Conner, part of the shop's grade would be the quality and training of the shop's technicians. That might also affect labor rates, according to Conner. "If we could get consistency in education across the state then we could pay people according to their knowledge," he says.
The Virginia Department for Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR) held four hearings in different locations across the state to get a sense of what collision repair industry professionals thought about licensing. "We were asking whether or not the industry should be regulated, not by whom and at what level, or whether it should be individuals or shops," says Mary Broz, director of communications, legislation and consumer education for DPOR.
The VALC took the opportunity to explain its proposal to attendees at the meetings. "There were some small shops there that thought they were being forced out of business, but we talked with them afterwards and told them that that's not the intent. Once we explained that we just wanted to level the playing field they jumped on board," Dorn explains.
While any regulation would have to pass the state legislature, DPOR would be the agency that would enforce those regulations. Conner says he is working to ensure that the collision repair industry would set those standards and would be closely involved in upgrading the requirements as technology changes. The goal would be to eventually make the industry self-regulating. DPOR would do the actual inspections.
Another reason why the VALC is pushing the proposal is because of concerns that it might create a regulation forced on them. An incident involving a legislator's wife led to the regulation of the towing industry in Virginia at great cost to business operators. Conner wants to avoid a similar fate. "The towing industry spent two years and about $100,000 to make sure it didn't get regulated so tightly that it got screwed up. Our idea was not to let this happen to us," Conner says.
VALC's proposed tiered method of licensing is not unique — other trades and businesses have tiered licenses — but an examination by ABRN shows that no other states license collision repair facilities on a graded basis.
