November 4th is ‘This is Engineering Day’, a nationwide initiative to publicly celebrate engineers and encourage more young people to consider engineering as a career path. To mark this day, we’re taking the opportunity to recognise the contribution of Copart’s engineers.
There are of course many different types of engineers across many different industries. Here at Copart, we have an 80 people strong engineering team whose specialist skills ensure that we can process our insurance customers’ vehicles efficiently and accurately to reach fast and accurate claim settlement.
We have the largest vehicle engineering team in the UK salvage industry, producing over 100,000 comprehensive vehicle damage reports each year.
Copart’s engineers and evaluators provide a range of bespoke professional services including physical on-site vehicle assessments, and vehicle condition or full engineer reports using industry recognised accident damage estimation systems, valuation guides and the latest repair technology.
And, all of this provides a streamlined end-to-end process – giving fast and accurate settlements for our insurance customers and an improved customer journey for their policy holders.
90% of our engineering force is either fully qualified, or in the process of studying towards, AQP standard, ATA VDA or IMI NVQ VDA 3/4 qualifications.
With ever-more complex technology in vehicles these days, it is essential for our engineers to have highly detailed levels of knowledge and competency in handling and categorising an increasing number of specialist vehicles.
We recognise how important it is to continuously upskill our engineers and evaluators to ensure that our insurance customers receive professional, accurate reports which enables claims to be processed correctly – and with quicker turnaround times.
That’s why we’re fully committed to the ongoing personal development of our engineering team and are proud to offer them a clear career path, which gives them the opportunity to gain recognised and professional qualifications.
We’re currently working in association with Thatcham Research’s Automotive Academy to provide NVQ Level 3 & 4 Vehicle Damage Evaluation courses and we’ll continue to identify further training opportunities in due course.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve continued to maintain our proactive approach to upskilling and developing our engineering team and have seen some amazing results come out of a difficult and challenging period.
Playing a large part in this has been Copart’s Learning Management System (LMS) – our internal online training platform.
Russ England, Engineering Services Manager, said:
“We’ve continued to drive forward training and development, despite the ongoing challenges of the pandemic. We’ve fully utilised online training during this time, launching over 30 digital courses for our Vehicle Engineers and Vehicle Damage Evaluators.
We’ve seen over 1,000 enrolments into these courses with an average 95% pass mark, which is fantastic; and we’re planning to launch further courses over the next few weeks around our new internal Engineering Portal, ADAS systems, valuations and disputes.”
Engineering is also on the agenda as part of Copart’s apprenticeship schemes, which we have made a significant investment into.
Our apprenticeships offer employees the chance to learn new skills in an area which interest them, gain industry recognised qualifications, and potentially progress within our business. To date, we have invested into over 30 apprenticeships across our business in a range of areas, including Vehicle Damage Assessment.
Phil Briggs, Director of Operation Centres, Transport & Engineering, said:
“We’re fully committed to providing the highest levels of expertise to our insurance customers and supporting our engineering employees to achieve industry recognised qualifications is key to this.
Vehicle technology will continue to advance, and we’ll stay one step ahead by investing into the ongoing training and development of our engineers. ‘This is Engineering Day’ gives us a perfect opportunity to shine a light on our highly skilled team of engineers and celebrate their valuable contribution to our business.”
Read about the range of value-added services provided by Copart’s engineers or find out more about This is Engineering Day.