SCRS OEM Summit: GM, Ford, Rivian engineers on importance of ADAS repair procedures

The Society of Collision Repair Specialists (SCRS) has shared details about the third and final session of its 2026 OEM Collision Repair Technology Summit, which will wrap up an afternoon program focused on vehicle safety, from national objectives to vehicle engineering and into the collision repair process.

“Preserving the Safety System: Sensors, Calibration and Repairability” will take place Thursday, Nov. 5, from 3:30–4:30 p.m. during the SEMA Show in Las Vegas, featuring ADAS systems and service engineering experts from General Motors, Ford Motor Co., and Rivian.

SCRS says the session will answer for repairers what it takes to preserve and restore the ADAS safety capabilities engineered into the vehicle after collisions.

“Cameras, radar, and other sensing technologies are fundamentally changing what vehicles can understand about the environment around them,” an SCRS press release states. “These systems can identify objects, measure distance and velocity, recognize roadway conditions, and combine information from multiple sensors to support increasingly sophisticated vehicle decisions. That capability also introduces extraordinary precision into the collision repair process.”

The third OEM Summit session will bring together the GM, Ford, and Rivian engineers who are responsible for sensing systems, vehicle performance, calibration strategies, and service engineering so they can discuss what today’s sensors can do, what can affect their performance, and how automakers translate engineering requirements into repair procedures and field instructions.

Participants include:

• • Steven Vance, principal hardware engineer, engineering technical leader, and ADAS sensors and sensing systems at GM — among his responsibilities are sensor capabilities and requirements that affect repair, including sensor modalities and strengths, the importance of sensor alignment, and the potential influence of aftermarket accessories on sensing performance.
  • Chad Zagorski, principal systems engineer and ADAS at GM — develops new ADAS technologies and improves existing systems, focusing on enhancing ADAS performance across GM’s vehicle lineup. His work combines engineering and product development with industry collaboration on standards and test-method development.
  • Brian Perkins, body and damageability commodity manager of design for service at Ford — leads Ford’s collision and damageability team and oversees the Paint and Body Technology Center. His team represents collision repair technicians within Ford’s global organization by testing and validating repair tools and procedures. SCRS says this work ensures that technicians have the information necessary to properly repair Ford vehicles, including increasingly important ADAS documentation.
  • Ryan Davenport, service engineering, propulsion and electronics senior manager at Rivian — oversees service program launches, ADAS and propulsion diagnostics, and incident resolution. His work includes troubleshooting complex vehicle systems, ensuring Rivian’s electric vehicles meet service and safety requirements, and improving the technician and customer experience.

SCRS says the panelists will explore how sensors are designed to operate and how variables introduced by a collision or repair, such as sensor position, mounting locations, structural dimensions, wheel alignment, ride height, replacement glass, body materials, and other seemingly small changes, can affect what a vehicle’s sensing systems perceive.

The discussion, moderated by Database Enhancement Gateway (DEG) Administrator Danny Gredinberg, will also take attendees behind the development of collision repair information to cover:

• • How engineering requirements become service procedures;
  • How calibration strategies are established and tested; and
  • What a successful calibration actually verifies about system performance.

“Those questions grow increasingly significant as crash avoidance and mitigation technologies play a larger role in vehicle safety,” the release states. “The session will ultimately confront a question with direct implications for every business repairing modern vehicles: what must a collision repair facility do to confidently determine that a vehicle’s safety systems have been restored to the performance its manufacturer intended?”

SCRS says together, the three 2026 OEM Collision Repair Technology Summit sessions are designed to tell a connected story about vehicle safety: “What safety outcomes is the nation trying to achieve? How are those outcomes engineered into the vehicle? And after a collision, how do we preserve them?”

For collision repair professionals working on modern vehicles, SCRS encourages attendees to participate in the entire series rather than viewing the sessions independently. To register for the entire summit, click here.

The afternoon begins with “The National Safety Objective: Safer Vehicles, Safer Roads,” featuring National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Deputy Administrator Lee White, who will examine federal vehicle and roadway safety priorities.

The second session, “Engineering the Safety Benefit: From Requirement to Real-World Performance,” features safety and ADAS engineering leaders from General Motors, who will explore how automakers translate safety objectives into vehicle technologies. It will also cover how they establish performance requirements and evaluate whether those technologies produce measurable safety benefits in the real world.

Panelists will include Michael Carpenter, General Motors Active Safety and Global Vehicle Performance owner; Jameson Collins, General Motors Active Safety and staff product manager; and Jeremy Nelson, Ford Motor Co. ADAS application systems engineer.

The 2026 OEM Collision Repair Technology Summit is part of SCRS’ Repairer Driven Education (RDE) program at the SEMA Show, which includes several classes, the IDEAS Collide Showcase, and more.

An SCRS RDE Full Series Pass provides access to Tuesday and Wednesday RDE sessions, IDEAS Collide, the OEM Collision Repair Technology Summit, and the SCRS Afterparty. To register for the full series pass, click here.

For additional information about SCRS and Repairer Driven Education, visit scrs.com/rde.

Images

Logo provided by SCRS