The organization set aside three hours of its annual meeting as an open forum to hear feedback from shops, insurers and automakers

After a roller-coaster year that included staff layoffs and a change in top leadership, I-CAR leaders worked hard at the training organization's annual meeting this summer to convey that I-CAR is newly refocused on its customers, volunteers and mission.

“When I see what an improved and improving organization was able to deliver in fiscal 2008 in a difficult economy by most measures, I'm optimistic about our challenges and our ability to meet them over the next 18 months,” CEO John Edelen told attendees at the annual I-CAR gathering, held in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Neither Edelen nor board chairman Robby Robbs made any effort to gloss over the struggles I-CAR has had since announcing a $1.1 million dollar loss in 2007. Last fall, Edelen moved from his position as board chairman to become interim CEO when long-time I-CAR employee Tom McGee was asked to step down from that position. (McGee became I-CAR's director of industry relations and product operations but left the organization this month.) Last March, after months of internal restructuring, I-CAR laid-off approximately 10 percent of its staff. And in June, after an executive search process during which the board changed its profile for the ideal candidate, Edelen, a retired Allstate executive, was chosen to stay on as CEO.

The changes helped I-CAR slow its financial losses, ending its latest fiscal year with a loss less than half that of the previous year. And Edelen was able to report another piece of good news: a 15 percent rebound in attendance at I-CAR classes. The 115,000 “student units” taught – one unit equals one student taking one class – was still far from the peaks of 150,000 or more in the late 1990s through 2002, but was about equal to I-CAR's average annual student counts for 2003-2006 fiscal years .

As part of that effort to listen to the various segments of the market on which I-CAR depends, the organization set aside three hours of its annual meeting as an open forum to hear feedback from shops, insurers and automakers. About 150 people turned out to share their questions, frustrations and suggestions for the training organization.

Here's a sampling of what they had to say:

• Gary Wano of GW & Son Auto Body in Oklahoma City, Okla., was one of several attendees who said shops often learn the necessity of a certain repair procedure at an I-CAR class only to be told by an insurer – in some cases, someone who attended or even taught the same class – that the procedure is not something the insurer will pay the shop to do. “How can you teach it if you aren't going to pay for it,” Aaron Schulenburg of the Washington Metropolitan Auto Body Association said. “It comes down to the perception of legitimacy of that instructor.”

• But trainer, consultant and association leader Tony Passwater said the problem Wano and Schulenburg described is not new – nor, he added, is shops attending classes but not performing the procedures taught – but is one I-CAR can do little to control. He said he would like to see I-CAR's online training be made more affordable rather than “twice as much as a classroom-led class,” and that more of I-CAR's training be offered online.

• Bob Rogers of State Farm in Washington, D.C., said he thinks it would be helpful if rather than just pass/fail results, students received details about what types of questions they answered incorrectly on I-CAR's post-class tests.

• Roger Cada, s enior claims education and training instructor for State Farm, suggested that I-CAR produce 5-minute preview YouTube-style videos to promote its courses, making the promotion (and where possible, the classes) less scripted and more visually-appealing for those who learn best that way.

• DeLee Powell of Bakers Collision Repair in Mansfield, Ohio, said she has taken more than 40 I-CAR classes and, like her shop's technicians, have never found any of them to be “a waste of four hours.” But, she said, better course descriptions would help students – as well as local I-CAR volunteers scheduling the classes – avoid some of the perceived duplication of content among some of the classes. ( Passwater added that requiring that students take some classes before others also could help because the repetitive information is sometimes currently needed because I-CAR doesn't know in which order a student may take classes.)

• Marc Essig, a retired college autobody instructor in Oregon who now teaches nearly full-time for I-CAR in six states, said I-CAR's Gold Class points system has students taking no more than the two classes required each year, and often choosing classes based more on availability than on those most relevant to their work. “I just finished (teaching) a refinish program; half of the students were body technicians who never had a spray gun in their hands,” Essig said. “What good does that training do? All they're after is that two (Gold Class) points. I see the value of our training as a result going down.”

• But another I-CAR instructor, Gene Lopez of Seidner's Collision Centers in Southern Calif., said he's not averse to body technicians taking refinish classes. “I want the body man to understand why it's critical that he finishes in 150 grit,” Lopez said. “So I welcome that body man into my refinish class, and vice versa. A painter is never going to weld. But how many painters are going to look at a core support that has just been welded on and be able to understand whether that's a good weld or a poor weld?”

• Other participants at the forum said I-CAR should offer more in-depth damage analysis and estimating training, or should research and create repair procedures like it has done in the past with sectioning and – in its earliest days – unibody vehicle repair.

Next week: I-CAR explains changes in the works.

John Yoswick, a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon, who has been writing about the automotive industry since 1988, is also the editor of the weekly CRASH Network (www.CrashNetwork.com). He can be contacted by email at jyoswick@SpiritOne.com.