Business View Magazine | January 2021

129 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JANUARY 2021 THE RECREAT ION VEHI CLE INDUSTRY ASSOC I AT ION (RV I A) lands. With regard to the pandemic, the Government Affairs team worked to have the industry declared an essential business, with the understanding that everyone was operating in compliance with CDC requirements. What made this effort successful was an industry relaunch taskforce established by RV Industry Association Chairman Garry Enyart. The taskforce brought together people from companies across the entire RV industry, including the RV Dealers Association and the National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds. “This industry unity not only allowed us to ensure RV companies were considered essential, but it also allowed us to respond faster to the pandemic than other industries,” Kirby adds. The biggest new initiative for the association is the RV Technical Institute (RVTI) that was established specifically for training and recruiting RV service technicians to address an industry-wide shortage for skilled RV service technicians. Kirby explains, “The RV Industry Association and Go RVing provided seed money for RVTI to purchase a building in Elkhart and set up shop. We have a board made up of manufacturers, suppliers, and dealers that works with the RVTI staff on developing great training curriculum for technicians. One of the things we’re working on as an industry is to reduce what we call the repair event cycle time – the time from when a consumer takes their RV into a dealer and it gets repaired and returned to them. Our Institute will help in that regard, by addressing the need for skilled technicians.” In addition to the in-person training available at the RVTI headquarters and through their training partners, RVTI launched a new Level One online training program that allows students to complete the course at their own pace, according to their own schedule. Kirby adds, “We expect the online program to be extremely successful and hope we’ll be able to train more technicians than ever. Level One is just the first stage, we’ve already started development of the Level Two program that is expected to be ready by mid- 2021. The curriculum has been created over the past few years with input from subject matter experts from across the industry. We couldn’t have moved so quickly to launch the online program without that solid framework. Launching the online program was in the plan, the pandemic just accelerated the timeframe.” Another critical part of the RVTI program are the authorized learning partners across the country – a network of regional partners approved to deliver RVTI’s standardized training on a local or regional basis. These partners include RV dealership, state RV associations, RV manufacturer companies, and state agencies. Courtesy of Go RVing