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78 BCBUSINESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 BCBUSINESS.CA October, as well as KPMG and the B.C. Automobile Association. Revenue was still down dramatically for 2020, Hussack allows, but Proshow was able to keep virtually all its 50 staff working—indeed, it even hired two more. With live events now planned for the fall, the company is taking down its makeshift studios to make room for forklifts to move around again. But it will keep its virtual control rooms, Hussack says. He believes some of the meetings that used to take place in person have permanently shifted to cyberspace, with the important caveat that organizations will have to meet higher standards of presentation to maintain the engagement with their audiences. They'll have to put on a "news-level broadcast," Hussack predicts. On a more practical level, COVID forced Proshow to run a tighter ship than before, and those changed processes are going to stick, Hussack explains. The company no longer offers the loose payment terms it did in the past, and the equipment rental business is no longer expected to subsidize staff time spent on pre-production, for example. "We now charge for it," Hussack says. W H A T D O E S N ' T K I L L Y O U If there's one lesson every COVID survivor business seems to have learned, it's to make their organization more resilient in the face of such shocks. "We were set up for one of our better years," Riggit Services controller Neetu Dhaliwal recalls of the opening months of 2020. But as that fateful March progressed and the concerts and conventions the aerial rigging and suspension contractor had on its books got called off, Dhaliwal realized that Riggit was staring at a 97-percent revenue cliff. The company's first reaction was to stop the bleeding by apply- ing for whatever government assistance was available and trim- ming overhead costs, from cleaning to rent. The company's 18 core staff agreed to take a temporary pay cut. The best it could do for its hundreds of freelance workers was point them to sources of gov- ernment relief. With the vast majority of its business moribund, Riggit dug into the smaller slices of its revenue pie that had cropped up from time to time in past years. It aggressively pitched itself to film and TV productions, which began to pick up after the first wave of COVID infection subsided. It also sought work installing and reviewing rigging in high-school audi- toriums, community event spaces and a pharmaceuticals plant under construction. It even helped set up the alternative COVID care site at the Vancouver Convention Centre (never needed, as it turned out). "We're not in the business of putting together hospital sites," Dhali- wal says, but the team was practised at moving into an unfamiliar space and coming up with solutions quickly. In that sense, it was no different from setting up an outdoor concert or in Rogers Arena. Revenue fell 80 percent in 2020 and will likely be down 65 percent in 2021, Dhaliwal adds. But the core team stayed together, and pay levels were restored earlier this year. In future years, Dhaliwal foresees a more diversified—and larger—revenue base, with more than half the work coming from installations and film and the balance from tradi- tional concerts and events. "I think it's made us stronger," she says of the pandemic experience. "It's given us confidence in what we can take on." Riggit wants to be prepared for when any of its business lines shut down—be it events, film or construction. "Going through this again is just not an option," Dhaliwal says. n the road show's arrival to hiring and stocking trailers to scheduling the nurses' shifts. "Corporate road shows are something we've done before. There's never a dull moment," laughs Burton, PDS's CEO. And while she doesn't expect the immunization work to continue beyond the fall, the experience opened doors to government and community work. Though not a profit generator, it has kept the core PDS team of seven together and employed through the pandemic. And the meetings work is showing signs of picking up. Canadian clients are going ahead with smaller events for the second half of the year and American groups are enquiring about 2022. Proshow Audiovisual's business likewise came to an abrupt halt in March 2020. The com- pany used to rent equipment such as projectors and lighting for medical conferences, award shows and fundraising galas. It had 26,000 square feet of warehouse space in Vancouver and Calgary, much of it now empty and inactive. " COVID reinvigorated us as a service busi- ness," reflects Proshow's vice-president of pro- duction and co-owner, Matt Hussack. Despite the shutdown of events, "people are going to need to communicate," he and his business partners, Tim Lang and Tim Lewis, theorized. They settled on a strategy to help clients stage virtual meetings with higher production val- ues than your basic Zoom or Microsoft Teams videoconference. Proshow took the vacant space in its ware- houses and set up studio facilities and virtual control rooms. New clients came in the door, such as the BC SPCA, seeking a virtual event to replace its annual fundraising dinner in BOOSTER CLUB A PDS vaccination clinic in the Interior Health region