Raymond A. Volpatt Jr. recalls with some distress the painful months starting in April 2020. Although some of his family-owned contracting company’s work was deemed essential and continued in the early pandemic, a third of its annual revenue, $10 million worth, was cancelled or postponed.
“I sat down with my accountant,” said Volpatt, the Pittsburgh firm's president who prefers to go by Ray, “and looked at the books and determined that if employees had nothing to do and we had no more revenue, I could keep the doors open and continue paying about 12 office staff ” for about two-and-a-half years, he said. “Anybody I could keep working, I kept working,” he says. “Did I lose sleep? Yeah.”