1988 - 2000

I joined Tesco Stores Ltd as a Store Planner in the Property and Estates Division, virtually straight from secondary school. For the first 5 years at Tesco the company paid for me to attend the College of North East London to further my education, on a day release scheme. In the summer of 1993 I was promoted to Senior Store Planner having gained an HNC qualification in Building Construction and Architectural Studies.

During my time with Tesco I worked on all of their various store types. In the early years as a store planner my duties included producing new store drawings for projects up to £50m. Typically, I was responsible for the preparation and design of up to ten new store projects a year. Often each store could take up to 6 months before work started on site and a further 12 months to complete. Therefore, I could have as many as 15 live projects on my desk at any one time with a total value of more than £300m.
As Tesco grew larger and started to evolve and diversify new and exciting opportunities arose. By the time I left the company I'd had experienced working in new stores, Extras, extensions, refits, Metros, Express and some of the early european store formats in Budapest and Prague, as well as Design Standards, Store Formats and Facilities Management.

2000 - 2002

I started at Dixons Stores Group, (DSG) in February 2000 on a three month contract assisting a senior designer with the roll out of the D21 refit program. DSG found my extensive Tesco experience of refits, new stores and large format space planning extremely beneficial and my contract was soon extended to 12 months. During this time I worked on most of the DSG formats including Dixons, Currys, The Link and PC World. Some of the more memorable projects I was involved in during this time included the prestigious redesign and fit out of Dixons, Oxford Street, the initial roll out of the new Currys format to about 60 stores nationwide within a time frame of just 9 weeks. My responsibilities also then included ensuring the work was correctly CADed up and issued to all members of the design team both internal and external.
In late 2001 I joined as a permanent member of staff within the Store Planning Team for Currys. My portfolio of projects included the major refit of Currys Luton and new stores in Barrow-in-Furness, Halifax, Medway and Sevenoaks to name but a few. Although this was a very happy time for me by Feb 2002, I had just about achieved all the targets that I'd set myself when I first joined the company.

2002 - present time

It was about February 2002 that I decided to move away from retail completely and concentrate my time and energy within the residential sector. I created Room-by-Room (uk) Ltd with the intention of providing a good quality design service for anyone who wanted to extend convert or build a new property. Working from my office near Ware in the Hertfordshire countryside, I provide customers with a service of good quality friendly impartial advice, at least three alternative solutions and variations to the same brief and some idea of costs involved and time frames to achieve the drawing work and the build from start to finish.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you for taking the time to looking around and hope that you find my web site informative and a good source of information. I look forward to discussing your project with you in the near future.

Andrew May
director