I-CAR Australia has awarded Gold Class Collision status to West Ryde Smash Repairs in New South Wales.
Marshall Collier, Director at West Ryde Smash Repairs, said the Road to Gold training helped the business transition into new technologies and improve quality, safety, and efficiency of repairs, benefiting customers.
“We entered the Road to Gold programme wishing to be aligned and educated with industry standards and procedures across our whole repair process from estimating to repairing,” said Collier.
“West Ryde Smash Repairs is in its 50th year of operation and we have an incredible team of workers who are all dedicated to safety and quality. Our initial idea was to join I-CAR to upskill our team so that we [could] achieve the utmost safety for our customers and employees. We soon realised the extra benefits of our new training culture and were excelling with increased workloads due to business growth. Our working mindset was shifting towards having better processes and we knew that training with I-CAR was key.”
According to Collier, the business benefitted greatly from using I-CAR’s Industry Training Alliance Partner, PPG. “We were the first NSW repairer to install the MoonWalk system. With the help of Greg Tunks, we were able to complete Green Belt training. Adam Hogg assisted in the organisation of training our refinish technicians at their Eastern Creek facility. We have further vehicle mapping training scheduled in October,” said Collier.
“We highly recommend this training. With today’s modern vehicles being EVs, and with advancements in ADAS systems, it is critical for our managers, estimators and technicians to be familiar and confident with the latest technologies and methods. The I-CAR training assists the repairer to be trained and capable of dealing with current model vehicles that are more complex than ever before.”
Worker feedback was positive, with staff saying they now feel more confident repairing cars after completing the training, resulting in a safer and more efficient outcome for the business and vehicle owners.
“Each worker had a different preference on their training journey,” said Collier. “The shorter online courses appealed to our office staff with many of them choosing to complete a module first thing in the morning. The two-day welding certification hands-on workshop helped our technicians to become personally accredited and certified, whereas the private PPG training classes helped to upskill our refinishers in the water-base systems.”