FAQs

CIECA was established in 1994 and has serviced the collision industry for over 25 years. The organization was formed out of the need to address one of the challenges in the collision repair industry at the time—the re-keying of estimate data from the estimating system into the body shop management system. In the 1980s, a group of industry stakeholders approached the Collision Industry Conference (CIC) membership about this issue and a taskforce was formed. It was called the Collision Industry Electronic Data Interchange Subcommittee (CIEDIS).

The group met throughout the 1980s and 1990s as a subcommittee of CIC. As it grew, members realized the need to form a separate organization. CIECA was incorporated on January 20, 1994. Thirteen companies provided the seed money to fund the organization for one year. Roger Cadaret was CIECA’s first executive director.   

CIECA’s membership currently includes 13 Fortune 500 companies and is open to members of the collision repair and property restoration industries, and related segments: repairers, insurers, OEMs, parts and material suppliers, information and software providers, car rental companies, towing companies, salvage and recycled parts providers, auto glass replacement facilities, subrogation providers, general service providers and property restoration providers.

CIECA develops and promotes electronic communication standards that allow the collision industry to be more efficient.

CIECA develops collision industry electronic standards, codes and standard messages and provides implementation guides to make the industry more efficient. All standards are developed by members. CIECA's goals are to deliver benefits to all participants through reduced development and support costs, lower cost of implementation, reduced barrier to entry and faster development times.

CIECA is made up of Board Committees and Standards Development Committees (SDCs).

Examples of Board Committees: Executive, Education, Finance and Marketing

Examples of SDCs: Architecture, Photo Estimating, FNOL (First Notice of Loss), Repair Order, Repair Status, Scheduling, Salvage and Rental. 

Read more about the committees online. For further questions and to find out how to get involved in a committee, contact Charley Quirt, CIECA’s project manager.

CIECA Standards help organizations do business more efficiently by improving data flow and reducing errors. CIECA Standards can be used to seamlessly exchange information with external partners, or between departments within companies/organizations. 

Key points about the standards development process:

• The development process provides a forum within which the participants learn from each other,
• Best practices and information are shared freely in a non-competitive environment,
• Implementations occur more easily, and
• The process provides unique insight and potential partnership opportunities for long-term business relationships.

Login to the CIECA website: www.cieca.com.  On the main menu select the Standards drop down and from there select "Standards & Tools".  Access to this information requires CIECA membership and a valid userid and password.  From that web page, select BMS Releases, IGs and Instance Docs. Use the drop down menu to select the desired release, implementation guide or instance document.

EMS (Estimate Management Standard) is CIECA’s Legacy standard. It was the first electronic communication standard designed by CIECA and implemented throughout the industry in 1994. It is still used in the industry; however, it has been superseded by the BMS. This standard has saved millions of labor-hours each year and improved efficiency by eliminated the re-keying of estimate data from the estimating system into the body shop management system. No enhancements have been made to the EMS since 2002.