New capabilities advance AI-enabled work risk intelligence, frontline learning and leadership development; Surge Award winners to be recognized at the conference

NAPERVILLE, Ill., Oct. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — FactorLab, a Work Risk AI company, today opened the third annual Innovation & Leadership in High-Risk Work Conference for safety and operations leaders in high-risk industries. This year’s conference is co-sponsored by the Chicagoland Construction Safety Council, a nonprofit organization based in Hillside, Ill., dedicated to advancing safety and health in the construction industry.

The two-day event, taking place Oct. 13-14 at the Northern Illinois University Naperville Event Center, includes leaders from construction, utilities, energy, industrial operations and insurance sharing practical approaches for improving frontline leadership, safety and operational performance.

The program features keynotes and breakout sessions by industry leaders including Brian Greiner, Executive Vice President of Operations at Pepper Construction; Kevin Kohart, Chief Risk Officer at BMWC; Steve Jordan, Vice President of Health, Safety & Environment at Flintco; Rob Berryman, Senior Safety Consultant at American Contractors Insurance Group (ACIG); Nicholas Grosso, Director of Safety and Health at Hensel Phelps; and Zhenyu Zhang, Assistant Professor of Construction Science at Texas A&M University. Sessions will explore how distributed organizations can build stronger frontline leaders, learn faster from the work happening every day, apply AI to work planning and safety, and turn frontline experience and insight into better decisions and safer, more competitive operations.

“We’re excited to welcome leaders from across the industry to Naperville to learn from one another, challenge what we think we know and explore what comes next,” said Barry Nelson, Founder and CEO of FactorLab. “We believe the organizations that learn fastest, by combining human experience, proven knowledge, frontline data and new AI-enabled solutions, will have an enduring advantage in the years ahead. This conference is about learning together and exploring how we can build that advantage.”

New SmartTagIt capabilities

At the conference, FactorLab announced major enhancements to its SmartTagIt Work Risk AI platform. SmartTagIt connects and strengthens planning, execution and learning to help crews deliver on time, prevent rework, build field leadership and go home safe.

SmartTagIt enhancements include:

• About Me gives frontline leaders personalized game tape, insights and coaching based on their own work, helping them understand their strengths, identify opportunities to improve and continue developing over time.
• Genesis, FactorLab’s AI-powered discovery and decision-support assistant, enables users to explore what they need to know through natural language discovery of unstructured field conversations, company know-how and work context. It helps them reframe questions, get work done and find the insights to make high-impact decisions.
• New Work Risk Models — including Energy Wheel Intelligence, High-Risk Work, Planning Effectiveness and Hidden Need Discovery — surface new risk signals that help leaders identify patterns, understand how risk builds across operations and measure the impact of risk management and training initiatives.
• Image Assist uses AI image recognition to add context and improve the quality of field planning, permit preparation as well as hazard and control recognition.

Together, these capabilities expand SmartTagIt’s ability to turn previously unseen safety and planning activity into work risk intelligence that helps individuals and organizations learn and improve at scale.

Surge Awards

FactorLab will present its annual Surge Awards at the conference. The awards recognize individuals and companies pioneering incident-prevention practices that reshape the role of frontline leadership in workplace safety. The program celebrates those driving safer work through proven practices and aims to inspire others to help reduce serious injuries.

“Surge matters because it gives us a chance to stop and recognize the people who are doing the hard work every day. These awards are grounded in more than 1.2 million conversations, which makes the recognition incredibly meaningful. Our customers trust us, challenge us and help us — and the entire industry — get better. Being able to thank them and celebrate the leaders who are making a real difference in the field is one of the most important things we get to do,” said John Mavros, Vice President of Customer Success at FactorLab.

For more information about the Surge Awards, visit www.factorlab.com/surge.

About FactorLab

FactorLab is a Work Risk AI company that helps distributed organizations transform safety, operational performance and frontline leadership across construction, utilities, energy and industrial operations. Its SmartTagIt platform uses proprietary AI and natural language processing models to capture and analyze frontline conversations and how work actually gets done, giving leaders early visibility into risk across every worksite.

SmartTagIt surfaces risk signals and game tape that legacy compliance tools cannot reach, helping crews deliver on time, prevent rework and go home safe. FactorLab partners with leading operators in complex, distributed work environments to help them see risk differently, build capacity to improve how work gets done and operate safely with less effort.

For more information, visit www.factorlab.com.

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SOURCE FactorLab