Growth for the Desktop Engineering Team Lockdown & tier restrictions have had one positive effect on Laird insofar as we’ve seen an increasing number of clients taking advantage of the various digital ways of providing automotive reports & other solutions. The most obvious is the desktop report; whilst working & effective since the early Nineties,…
We re delighted to celebrate (virtually) one of our finest engineers, Nikki Harbron, for reaching their 10th year anniversary with Laird. On behalf of everyone at Laird we would like to share our huge congratulations and thanks to Nikki for a decade of hard work, development with a few laughs along the way. This week…
By Nik Ellis Imagine if Covid had hit in the Eighties or Nineties, with the internet in its sluggish infancy, with little uptake by the UK’s businesses. People would have been panic buying thermal paper rolls for fax machines, not loo roll! More importantly for the claims process, imagine how slow (& unreliable) everything would…
By Nik Ellis Expert Witnesses have transitioned towards virtual examinations through video calls and video conferencing rather than face to face appointments, but what are the positive & negative effects? We’ve been rattling on about virtual assessments & examinations since we helped BT trial their RVI (Remote Video Inspections) system back in 1995. We used…
By Nik Ellis When lockdown first kicked in at the start of last year, we packed up our office, watered the plants, emptied the fridges & went home. I think we lost about an hour that day before we were back up & running as fortunately the software we use, Swiftcase is cloud based. It…
By Nik Ellis At the start of my bodyshop career, I was amazed at how easy it was to steal a car. We received regularly a transporter full of stolen & recovered cars, normally with no keys. To gain entry & start the car up we typically used a flat screwdriver. It only took just…
By Nik Ellis Experts have transitioned towards virtual examinations through video calls and video conferencing rather than face to face appointments. But what are both the positive and negative effects of virtual assessments? We’ve been rattling on about virtual examinations since we helped BT trial their RVI (Remote Video Inspections) system back in 1995. We…
By Jonathan Mitchell Modern Classic Estate Cars It’s hard to believe when you look at the new car market today (just take BMW’s recent announcement of the new M3 Touring for example), that there was a time, not that long ago, when estate cars were the exclusive reserve of the sensible, practical and dare I…
Left of Centre or Leave of Senses? What constitutes a classic car? If you were to take HMRC’s definition to the letter, then for tax purposes, it’s any car that is worth more than £15,000 and over 15 years old. Meanwhile, the DVLA deems any car built over 40 years ago to be a ‘historic…
Classic Fords It’s a gloomy October morning as I write this. It’s dark, cold, and raining. Most of the country is back in an extended lockdown (pick a number between one and…..), the pubs are (mostly) closed, the politicians are arguing (again), unemployment is at an all time high, and you can’t go into a…