Three Cheers for the World Skills Competitors
BY DARRYL SIMMONS
If you’ve missed our digital coverage of the 2019 WorldSkills competition in Russia— prepare to be blown away. The event was an amazing demonstration of auto repair and refinishing techniques.
Beyond the excitement, the event received an immense amount of coverage in the popular press. People around the world were impressed by the professionalism of the competitors. In fact, the attention put another nail in the coffin of the out-of-date impressions of working in the collision industry. It is about time. I hope it encourages the public to see that the rest of the auto repair sector to demonstrate the same level of professionalism.
After all, the job of an industry professional is to see customer vehicles returned to pre-accident condition in a timely and profitable manner.
While the general public is more than willing to credit doctors and lawyers with having a special expertise in their field, collision professionals don’t always given the same respect—how often have you hear someone say, “There’s no way it is going to cost me $4,000 to replace my bumper.”
But just as a repair professional would be ill-prepared diagnoser-of-ailments, a doctor made to repair a vehicle would—almost certainly—end up breaking the Hippocratic Oath. That’s not a criticism of doctors, it’s just that like in their own profession, repairing vehicles requires quite a bit of know-how. The general public knows that it is important to get their vehicles back into working order, but they don’t know how difficult it is. This is a large part of the reasoning behind our overarching goal at Bodyworx Professional— celebrating the achievements of the individual tradespeople in this amazing industry. When we provide you with content that makes you better prepared to overcome customer doubts, your business benefits and there is an incremental improvement in the general public’s assessment of repair professionals.
This is a positive feedback loop situation. Your continued success benefits us, and our continued success benefits you. Sure, all too often, we get trapped in the weeds of the politics and processes—but that is why we are always so grateful for the many industry members who take the time to share their criticisms with us. For this support, we owe Canada’s collision community a big thank you.
Here at Bodyworx Professional, we will always continue to be to celebrate the achievements of this amazing industry—after all, your success is our own!
