John Rygg: Constructing and Engineering for All Industries at Kiewit

By Luke Lightning

April 17, 2023 

It's another week, which means an all-new episode of the Future Construct Podcast! This week, on Season 3, Episode 7, our host Amy Peck (@AmyPeckXR)  was joined by John Rygg, the Technology Strategist and R&D HoloLens Product Owner for the Kiewit Innovation Team (27-minute interview). A lot of insightful topics were discussed during the session, as Amy and John delved into exchanges about augmented reality, wearable technology, and integration into the construction industry.

Click to listen to our interview on Apple, Spotify, or Google, or watch on our Facebook or YouTube channels.

About John Rygg

With more than 20 years of experience managing and leading corporate IT teams in developing and implementing enterprise-wide software and infrastructure, John has been recognized as #10 on the 2017 Buildworlds Top 50 Technology Adoption Leaders. For much of his career, he has served in facilitating the technology strategic planning process to determine how IT can best benefit business outcomes. This also includes helping to capture innovation, thinking through corporate strategy, and putting technology to work to achieve it.

During the interview, John discussed numerous topics with host Amy Peck (@AmyPeckXR), including:

- Having IT heavily involved in the front-line innovation at Kiewit

- What difficulties pose obstacles to integrating wearable technology into the construction environment

- An explanation of the difference between pass-through video and true augmented reality and the impact each will have on the future of the industry

- Jason's opinion on the delineation between AR and VR and the deployments of both headsets for different utilities

Kiewit is one of North America’s largest and most respected construction and engineering organizations. Their construction and design engineering professionals work on some of the industry’s most complex, challenging, and rewarding projects – whether it’s boring tunnels through mountains, turning rivers into energy, or building bridges that connect communities. Kiewit people tackle important projects of every size in any market. As a construction and engineering leader, Kiewit — through its operating companies — brings a wealth of diverse resources and a track record for delivering the highest quality results on budget and on schedule. Kiewit’s size and experience provide stability, predictability, and know-how their clients and partners expect — and the flexibility and overall best value they deserve.

John has held several notable speaking engagements, including:

- Wharton School of Business: Infrastructure Investment Roundtable

- Enterprise Wearable Technology Summit – AR, VR & MR Devices in the Enterprise - BuiltWorlds Future Workforce Conference

– BuiltWorld’s Top Adoption Leaders

- Field Service Conference – Moving Into The Next Phase Of Leveraging Augmented Reality

- Builtworlds 2019 Smart Jobsite Conference

- Commercial UAV Expo 2019

Click to listen to our interview with Rygg on Apple, Spotify, or Google, or watch on our Facebook or YouTube channels.

SHOW NOTES

0:12 Amy Peck introduces John Rygg, the Enterprise Architect, Technology Strategist, and R&D Hololens Product Owner for the Kiewit Innovation Team.

4:14 Amy: "It's also a little bit unusual to have IT so heavily involved in that front-line innovation, so is that your impetus in saying, 'Hey, we need to look at this,' or was that already happening at the company?"

10:09 Amy: "That [the construction environment] has always been one of the challenges because as great as those devices [wearable tech like HoloLens] are, they're not as rugged as we'd like them to be, and oftentimes you'd have to wear hard hats and rigs that work with hard hats. Do you find that it's the challenging environment or promoting adoption that is the difficulty?"

13:39 Amy: "Can you explain the difference between pass-through video and true augmented reality, and what impact do you think these devices will have on the future of the industry?"

19:36 Amy: "I guess this is a question for you, too, in terms of AR and VR. I don't look at augmented reality and virtual reality as competing technologies ... Where do you see that delineation, and do you see deploying both kinds of headsets for different utilities?"

25:00 Amy: "If you could project yourself 20 to 25 years into the future, and you could have any gadget or service that would just make you personally happy or make your life better in some way, what would it be, and what would it do?"

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