Surrey Panel Care - Example of Good Environmental Practice
Surrey Panelcare is a well established family panel repair shop that ha
s become exemplary in many aspects of the crash repair industry.
Alan Costello, the patriarch of the family business, is an old hand that has seen the fads come and go over the long haul, and characteristically, does things in his own time for his own reasons.
While Surrey Panelcare was one of the late adopters of VACC Quality Assurance, they have gone on to make the system work to help them win several industry awards, the most recent being the Insurance Australia Group (RACV Insurance) Metropolitan Preferred Smash Repairer of the year, in recognition of achieving superior levels of quality, customer service, cost control, innovation, sustainability and fostering strong business relationships.
This honor is not surprising for Alan whose standard reply to the question “how are you” is always “fantastic” indicating his optimism and general attitude toward business and life, with the line, “we must move forward”.
Alan’s attitude is manifest in many ways in the busy shop, located in leafy Surrey Hills where space to accommodate work in progress is always at a premium, most particularly in the way that responsibilities are delegated to brother Brian Costello and nephew Matt Costello.
Matt in particular, perhaps drawing on his Army Reserve military training has been responsible as the Production Manager for a much disciplined implementation of their quality assurance, occupational health and safety, and environmental management systems.
Management systems of all types are often denigrated as being “a set of books” that sit on the shelf because no-one has the time to implement them. This of course may be true, as they require someone to take responsibility for their utilization. The point and benefit of systematic management is the opportunity to think out and document systems of work carefully so they can be repeated and then to allow useful records to be created and decisions made on the basis of real data, rather than an impulse or the latest fad.
The difference with Surrey Panelcare is that they understood and applied this principle to their VACC Quality Shop, Safe Shop Clean Green Shop management systems from which they are now enjoying the results. During a recent audit of their systems, Matt surprised the auditor by producing not just the records of their systems, but also the factual evidence of a net saving of more than $3,000.00 each year by being able to track their improvement over successive years. This is an impressive demonstration of the “profound knowledge” of his industry that the father of quality management, W Edwards Deming, said was required to make the sort of improvements that have now become mandatory in a global economy.
Of the many changes made to reduce costs relating to energy, water, solvent usage and waste disposal, the biggest single improvement was to buy a press with advice from John Fisher of Miltek, to compact paper, cardboard and plastic into bales for collection free of charge. This cost was offset entirely by the reduction in general waste collection fees.
In summary, apart from the financial benefit, the environmental benefits are:
- General waste reduced by 200 cubic meters per year
- Water consumption reduced by 15,000 liters per year
- 4200 litres of oil recycled per year
- 15 tonnes of steel recycled per year
- 8 tonnes of Plastic recycled per year
- 20 tonnes of cardboard recycled per year
To put these figures into perspective, the cost of waste disposal per vehicle has reduced from an already low pre implementation figure of $8.65 per vehicle, to now $6.35 per vehicle, which equates to a $2.30 or 27% saving. Multiply this by an average 60 jobs per week means a saving of over $7,000 per year.
Surrey Panelcare did not get to become an award winning successful business by guess work or by adopting the latest trend. Their business success is a result of being better at what they do than most and by following the EPA advice of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.