VDI Committee: Charter/Mission

Background
The Vehicle Damage & Imaging Committee (VDI) was created as a merger of two former CIECA committees: Estimate Management Standard (EMS) and Repair Facility. These committees were responsible for developing the predominant standards that are in use today: EMS 2.6 and the various vehicle damage EDI Implementation Guides.
The existing industry standards for Vehicle Damage Appraisal Assignment and Estimate are in EDI and dBase format. The next generation standard will allow all participants in the industry the capability to send and receive data in XML format. The Vehicle Damage & Imaging committee is chartered with developing and maintaining the next generation XML standards that will be used by the collision industry in the appraisal of and/or restoration of a vehicle that has incurred a loss. All standards will be based on the BMS (Business Message Specification) developed by CIECA. 

This document will use the term appraisal to represent both to an estimate and an evaluation.

Mission
The mission of the Vehicle Damage and Imaging committee is to develop and maintain standard implementations of the CIECA BMS to facilitate electronic data exchange between parties involved in the appraisal and/or restoration of a vehicle that has incurred a loss. This includes but is not limited to work requests, appraisals, images, and repair invoices. 

Scope & Objectives
The objective of the VDI committee is to provide a standard that is based upon a more flexible technology that will enable a wider variety of parties to participate and utilize CIECA standards.

The scope of the VDI Committee will include:

• Updating the BMS to support data elements and relationships from existing standards (e.g. EDI 124,272, 841, and 997, EMS 2.6)

• Defining code tables and values to be used in the implementation of the standard message(s)

• Developing a standard data format for communication exchanges (e.g. XML)

• Establishing Implementation Guides.

Note: This committee will not involve itself in any type of application additions and/or changes. 

The following table identifies the types of Vehicle Damage messages that will be supported within the CIECA BMS standard. It is not feasible to expect all transactions to be bi-directionally supported by all software applications:

Industry Segments Affected
VDI Provider -- A Company whose main businesses concern is providing vehicle damage repairs to the collision repair industry. The provider can perform vehicle damage repairs solely or can coordinate repair operations on a vehicle in conjunction with conventional repairs.

Damage Appraisers —Any entity whose role is to estimate or appraise vehicle damage and/or record and process appraisal information.

Information Technology Providers – Any entity that develops and/or maintains applications and/or services related to damage appraisals, appraisal data communications and/or appraisal data consolidation. 

Data Recipients —Any company that utilizes vehicle damage appraisals, vehicle damage data communications and/or vehicle damage data.