Industry News
Thatcham: 60% of current vehicles not covered by repair methods system
23rd January 2007
Peter Roberts, the chief executive of the insurer-funded repair research organisation Thatcham, told a recent crash repair safety summit at Oxford that approximately 60% of vehicles
are not covered by Thatcham’s published repair methods system. “We have got finite resources,” he told delegates to the Auto Body Professionals Club (ABP)-sponsored event.
The event, attended by insurers, vehicle manufacturers, repairers and experts was convened following growing concerns within the automotive repair sector about access to and the availability of data on repair methods for the growing number of vehicles containing new materials. A recent boron steel repair debate sparked by by former police chief John Dwyer had moved forward to the challenges presented by the wider range of new materials being used in motor vehicle manufacture.
During the meeting several delegates expressed a view that Thatcham needed to evolve into a lead body for the automotive sector, adopting a similar role to that of the gas installation maintenance sector body CORGI to set industry standards and police them.
Neil Kirk, Managing Director of Howard Basford, Britain’s third largest bodyshop repair group, told the meeting that the new BSI PAS 125 standard fell short of being an effective standard watchdog for the industry, since it does not address the lack of methods data and does not resolve the skill shortage within the industry.
Paul Jones of Basic Welding Services told delegates of audit findings which confirmed that only 5% of repairers in a recent survey could, for example, meet the needs of the newer Peugeot
models. “I have also seen technicians using the wrong equipment even when they’ve had a perfectly good inverter welder in one part of the shop which would be ideal for the job,” he said.
(www.abpclub.co.uk, repeated in AEG Desktop e-newsletter, 22 January)
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