The Story Behind Industrial VR: Building the Future of Facility Operations

Every great company starts with a problem worth solving. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Brian Lozes shared how a customer’s seemingly simple request launched a journey to transform how industrial facilities are designed, operated, and maintained.

The Genesis

As an engineer working in heavy industrial facilities, Brian spent years witnessing a persistent challenge: the disconnect between facility design and operational reality. “We’re talking utilities that provide power, chemical plants that make all the product or the feed goods for the products that we consume, all the way into oil and gas facilities that supply energy for the world,” Brian explains, setting the context for the industry he knew intimately.

The turning point came when a customer voiced a common frustration: stakeholders could only identify design issues after construction, when changes became exponentially more expensive. “It would be nice when our stakeholders, they walk these places as they’re being built and they’re saying they’d like them to be changed. It would be nice if our stakeholders could walk them down before they existed,” Brian recalls the customer saying.

This wasn’t just an isolated complaint. Brian had seen the data: “As a country, we spend trillions of dollars every year on capital projects, and there’s empirical data that’s showing upwards of 8% to 10% of that money is wasted every year just due to construction related rework.”

The Early Days

Unlike many startup stories that begin in garages or dorm rooms, this one started within a mid-sized engineering firm. “We were able to build some momentum with one organization and then create a company of our own,” Brian explains. This unique starting point provided crucial early validation and support: “It was very nice to have investors, if you will, right out the gate who believed in what we’re doing to help us really spring forward.”

But the path wasn’t immediately clear. Brian’s first experience with VR technology was filled with uncertainty: “It was such a big question mark for me. It was almost hard for me to fully grasp what I was experiencing.” The breakthrough came when they tested their first industrial asset in VR: “When we brought our industry’s content into it, very small, like something the size of a room when we brought it in, then it was, oh, we’re onto something here.”

Evolution and Growth

What started as a tool for design review has evolved into something much broader. The team became “the world’s first to actually incorporate the footage from drones and laser scanning gear,” enabling customers to virtually visit existing facilities. This expansion opened new possibilities in maintenance and training.

The growth has been remarkable: “We’ve got now several Fortune 100 companies using our product across the globe,” Brian shares. From Europe to the Middle East to Asia and across North America, their solution has proven its value. A recent example showcases the impact: instead of flying stakeholders to a remote site via helicopter for days of meetings, teams can now collaborate virtually in hours, delivering immediate ROI.

The Future Vision

Looking ahead, Brian’s ambitions extend far beyond facility visualization. “Three to five years from now, we want to be in every worker’s hands and attributable to a vast reduction in the amount of time people are spending in dangerous environments,” he states. This vision isn’t just about technology – it’s about fundamentally changing how industrial work is done.

The company is backing this vision with significant investment: “We’re investing deeply in our product to increase the scalability to enable that, the readiness to enable that, and then to widen the value proposition so that makes sense so everybody will use it.” With major technology announcements planned for the year, Brian hints at “milestone moments for us to open ourselves up to that goal being in everyone’s hands.”

For an industry that has traditionally been slow to adopt new technology, this story represents more than just a company’s success – it’s a glimpse into the future of industrial operations, where virtual technology makes complex facilities safer, more efficient, and more accessible than ever before.