Repair Round - Up

It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again
by Paul Syfko

IFEEL LIKE I HAVE WRITTEN THIS column before, but in all reality I have not. Every year in about this issue of AGRR magazine, I lay out the National Windshield Repair Association’s (NWRA) plans for our annual conference. This year’s conference will once again be held during Auto Glass Week at the NACE November 6-7 in Las Vegas. (Visit www.nwrassn.org to register.) Well, this column is about our annual conference, but this column is different from its predecessors. The reason it is different is because the NWRA is on the verge of something completely new.

Continual Growth
Since its inception, NWRA has been a small part of the auto glass community. But our growth over the past year and our new mission of a clean and sustainable industry has given our association new life and meaning. In case you have not noticed, repair rates are on the rise. The nation’s current economy and the industry’s current fluctuations have primed the market for the windshield repair community. These factors, along with a respected and growing certification program, have placed NWRA in a leadership position which we are proud to hold. Therefore the NWRA has invited the whole auto glass industry to our annual conference to discuss repair.

At this year’s meeting we will expand our auto glass industry green commitment and present our green paper to the entire automotive repair community. We will conduct two major panel discussions. The first discussion will bring together several major insurance companies and third-party administrators to talk about how best to promote ethical repair to our mutual customers. The second discussion will involve major industry players. Industry suppliers and retailers will be present. We will offer them several issues surrounding the repair community and they will hash out ideas and concerns overlapping those problems. Some topics you can expect to be addressed are “ROLAGS – one year later,” and “Rising repair rates – What does it mean and why?”

Not Just Industry Politics
This 2008 conference will not be solely about industry politics. The conference also will be about increasing the profitability of the conference attendees. To start, NWRA will be presenting an hour-long training course about the written portion of our certification program. Attendees will receive all the instruction necessary to prepare to take a written version of our online certification examination. If they choose, the certification examination will then be administered free of charge—$95 value will be considered part of your conference registration fee. If the repair technician passes the written exam, then he will merely need to present/perform his practical repair demonstration to become registered.

All NWRA Practical Assessment Administrators (PAA) that are exhibiting at NACE during the conference will be equipped to observe the technical demonstrations of prospective certified technicians. This means that astute qualified repair technicians will be able to leave Las Vegas as NWRA-certified technicians at no additional conference cost.

2008 conference attendees will also be able to attend a great 90-minute presentation. NWRA has invited Scott Orth of GTS to present attendees with an intense education seminar on what they need from a website and how to get one up and running.

NWRA will also be co-sponsoring the third annual Walt Gorman Memorial Windshield Repair Olympics (WRO) (see related story page 52).

As you can see, this year’s conference has a new look because NWRA has a new mission: to change the world one repair at a time.

AGRR
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