Often at my estimating seminars, I’ll have someone complain to me, “Mike, all the insurance companies will pay me for ‘set up and measure’ is 1.5 or 2 hours.”
My first response is generally to ask what they mean by “that’s all they will pay?” People only do to you what you tolerate. If you tolerate getting paid 1.5 to 2 hours for “set up and measure,” that’s all you’re going to get paid. It’s only when you quit tolerating it that you’ll get paid more.
But to be able to negotiate that successfully, you first need to know where the “1.5 to 2 hours” comes from. It absolutely does NOT come from the estimating system providers. You can visit the Database Enhancement Gateway (DEG) (www.DEGweb.org) for documentation that the Big Three estimating database providers do not have any pre-determined times for set-up and measure.
Mitchell International, for example, in response to DEG Inquiry #995, said, “Mitchell does not develop labor allowances for frame set-up or frame measuring, nor do we define the operations that may be necessary to achieve frame set up or measuring.”
Motor Information Systems (which provides the estimating database used by CCC Information Services) responded similarly to DEG Inquiry #6,608, saying, “There is no industry standard estimated work time to be used as ‘set up’ for frame straightening equipment…”
Here’s why they haven’t established a single “set up and measure” labor time and why a single uniform time for all shops and all vehicles makes no sense. First, the process that is required varies by vehicle. The only thing that every vehicle has in common is starting it up and driving it into the shop. After that, it all varies by vehicle.
With one type of vehicle, for example, you may need to only remove all the undercoating and seam sealer from the pinchwelds in order to mount the clamps. On another vehicle, you may first have to remove rocker covers before you can remove the undercoating and seam sealer. On another vehicle, you may also have to remove a floor undershield or mechanical lines (such as brake lines or air conditioning lines) that are too close to the pinchwelds. On some vehicles you may need to R&I wheels. And what you have to do to restore the pinchwelds afterward can vary.
In short, every vehicle is different. Not every car has the same labor time for putting on a door or a fender or to paint a bumper; it makes no sense to have the same labor time for the set up and measure of every vehicle.
Set up and measure time also varies by how you are measuring the vehicle. You might be using mechanical measuring with tram gauges or a tape measure. You may have computerized measuring. Or you may be using jigs on a bench system. At least one automaker requires that the vehicle be held at six different mounting points rather than the usual four. The time required for all these different methods also varies.
Lastly, the time to set-up and measure can vary based on the damage to the vehicle. The damage may increase the number of control points that have been misaligned, increasing the amount of measuring you need to do. You may need to set-up and measure the vehicle multiple times: during blueprinting to fully diagnose the damage, during repair to monitor measurements, and then a final measurement at the end to document that the vehicle is within specifications.
How can a single ‘set up and measure’ labor allowance take all these variables into account? The answer is that it can’t. It’s important to understand that this ‘1.5 to 2 hours’ has been pushed on us by insurers, and we just keep drinking the Kool-Aid.
People only do to you what you tolerate. I suggest you quit tolerating it. There’s so much involved in properly repairing today’s vehicles that a flat ‘set up and measure’ time just doesn’t cut it anymore. Get educated about what’s required to put every vehicle back to pre-accident condition, and write your repair plan accordingly.
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