12.02.2024
Interstruct Company Culture
Wondering what it’s like to work at Interstruct? Our Orlando and Tampa office teams are in synch on jobs and off. Leadership prioritizes opportunities for staff to connect and build relationships: with clients, subcontractors and, as importantly, each other. Here are some of the ways we mix work and play.
Orlando Office Holiday Party 2024
We celebrated in grand downtown-Orlando style, kicking off with dinner and drinks at the AC Sky Bar, followed by a night at Orlando Ballet’s Nutcracker at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.
Courtyard Series
Every other month we invite our team to come in the office to enjoy a Friday afternoon of cooking and hanging out. We rotate responsibility from each division of our company to host: executive, project managers, superintendents, Interstruct Design, and Select Projects. They can either cater or cook. The objective is to do something fun (think team building) for the event.
Courtyard Series: Italian Comfort Food
Host: Some Awesome Interstruct Women
In the lead up to Thanksgiving, the Friday theme was comfort (isn’t that what Italian food is?) and joy. Emma made homemade Vodka pasta sauce and rigatoni, Vanessa added homemade pasta fagioli soup, Ashley balanced out the meal with a salad bar and homemade fudge, and Debra sweetened the pot with homemade tiramisu.
We lit the fire, listened to music, played cornhole, and loved on the puppies. It was a good day at the office.
Courtyard Series: Sushi
HOST: Interstruct Design (our architecture team)
The Design team decided on a sushi theme. They put together a great spread built on homemade seasoned sushi rice with a “choose your own adventure” to roll into the nori, or just make a poke bowl.
For the main meats, we had tuna, salmon, crab, and ended up filleting a yellowtail snapper in office. Some of these were dressed with spicy sauce (sesame oil, sriracha, scallions) or spicy mayo and some with a simple soy sauce mixture (soy sauce, sesame oil, scallions, and ponzu) rounded out with cucumber, carrots, cream cheese, mango, tobiko, and masago. We made additional sauces like eel sauce, yum yum, and the spicy mayo and had bonito flakes, sesame seeds, ginger, and wasabi to finish off the rolls; plus, homemade miso soup with lots of tofu and mushrooms.
For dessert and drinks, we had a few types of mochi (red bean, green tea, sesame, and peanut) and plenty of saki (plum, yuzu, pear, nigiri, and flavored jelly shots), Japanese whiskey, and peach soju.
Afterwards, the team set up three projectors in our open area and teams of four were selected to race head-to-head in a Super Mario Kart tournament. Once again, amazing to see our office used as a social space.
Courtyard Series: Make Your Own Pizza
HOST: Interstruct co-founder and COO, Rich Monroe
PIZZA NIGHT: We made 12 custom pizzas in the Solo Stove Pi. The dough was all hand made and 12 volunteers learned how to form the pie, apply the toppings and cook it in the pizza oven using fresh oak wood from Rich’s property. Rich also made 3 batches of wings in homemade sauces (lemon pepper, BBQ rub, hot). We had some desserts brought in and a salad as well. In the end we did Interstruct Trivia where we formed teams of four to answer Interstruct related trivia questions as a fun game.
Courtyard Series: Taco Friday
Host: Interstruct Design, aka the A-Team
The A-Team (A = Architecture, and also, Awesome) treated the office to authentic home-cooked meal as hosts of our company courtyard series. This was not your typical taco night…we had a traditional tamale show-down featuring Peruvian V. Mexican tamales, a secret family guacamole recipe and homemade tomatillo. We topped it off (literally) with high-end tequila and a piñata in the courtyard. Rich and Ryan envisioned bringing the Team together like this when they first realized the potential of this building.
Company Outing to a Tampa Bay Rays game
With Interstruct employees running dozens of concurrent commercial construction projects through Central Florida and Greater Tampa Bay, it’s challenging to find a time that the entire team can gather. This year, we cleared the calender on a Wednesday afternoon, reserved a hospitality suite at Tropicana Field in St. Pete for a Tampa Bay Rags game, and hired bus transportation so everyone could enjoy themselves without worry.
Our outing landed near the Women in Construction week so we made sure to celebrate the amazing women who work across most of our divisions.
HOLIDAY PARTIES
Interstruct was founded in 2001, and the traditional “holiday party” has evolved through the years.