Published: 19/04/2021
At Copart Ireland, we are making significant investment into the personal development of our people to support them in achieving industry recognised engineering qualifications.
As our business continues to grow, alongside increasing volumes of more specialist and technologically advanced vehicles - including electric and hybrid - entering the total loss arena, we are committed to providing teammates with the necessary training and support to achieve industry compliance and provide the highest levels of accuracy and quality to our insurance customers.
In this article, Colm Munnelly, CSR/Yard Operative at our Castledermot Operation Centre, tells us about his own personal development journey with Copart Ireland.
What is your role at Copart Ireland?
I have a unique role with Copart Ireland as it is a hybrid Yard/CSR (Customer Service Representative) role. It’s a very varied role and a typical day for me begins with a security walk around the premises and catching up on my emails and my work orders. After that I’ll head out to the yard and wash any vehicles on the receiving pad and prepare them for imaging and uploading to our online auction platform.
Coupled with that, I will also be in the office handling any emails, phone calls or enquiries at the counter. The team here is very friendly and hard-working, which makes it a joy to be part of the Copart family here in Ireland.
Have you always been interested in cars?
I have been interested in cars ever since I could say the word car! I grew up around my father’s salvage company based on the border of Co. Laois and Carlow town, and after finishing college I returned home to operate this family business for many years.
I learnt an unquantifiable amount of knowledge about the industry and its environment during this time but eventually arrived at a crossroads in life as I wanted to progress my career further. That road led me to Copart.
Why did you choose to join Copart Ireland?
I was familiar with Copart already as our family business had previously purchased salvage vehicles from them. When a position became available in 2017, I decided to go for it and succeeded and have not looked back since.
The reason I joined Copart I suppose was because of the potential that the company offers, not just to employees but also to its buyers and sellers.
Copart offers sellers a global marketplace in an instant, giving access to thousands of potential buyers while also handling the collection, storage, and sale of the vehicle. They also inherit any issues along the way and ensure that a successful outcome is achieved, be it negotiating storage and recovery charges, washing, and preparing vehicles for auction, or dealing with change of ownership.
It really is a tremendous service and most importantly it inevitably returns a top price for our sellers’ vehicles.
How is Copart Ireland supporting your training and development?
I’ve always had an interest in the engineering and assessing side of the industry. I was keen to pursue my goal of becoming a fully qualified automotive assessor engineer and see what doors that could open for me within the industry.
Copart is supporting me to achieve my goal and I am very excited at the prospect of working as a fully qualified IAEA affiliated engineer, and to provide that service to Copart into the future.
What training have you done so far?
To date, I have completed all 4 written exams under the IAEA through Technological University Dublin (TUD) and also the AQP exam (Appropriately Qualified Person). Among the written exams were modules based on basic mathematics involved in accident reconstruction and investigation, law, vehicle damage assessment and insurance.
The last remaining exam I need to undertake in order to achieve full membership of the IAEA is the practical exam which entails the assessment of salvage vehicles, the correct estimation of the damage and also the successful categorisation and valuation of those vehicles.
What’s next?
I am being sent to the UK at the start of May for a 6-week period to support my final push to attain the completion of the practical exam, and to gain valuable hands-on experience of vehicle assessing and report writing. What better place to get this training but at Copart UK!
It is an exciting time and I greatly look forward to the challenges that lie ahead for me. I am being given an excellent opportunity to gain in-depth knowledge and experience of how the salvage industry operates in the UK. The future looks bright!
We wish Colm all the best with his training in the UK and we’ll be catching up with him again when he returns!
