Front End Engineering Design (FEED) for Large Industrial Projects: FEED Maturity and Its Impact on Project Cost and Schedule Performance

Assessing the maturity of front end engineering design (FEED) for large industrial projects is a critical task with significant influence on overall project success. The owner’s expectation is to be able to make informed decisions including cost and schedule predictions to determine whether the project should proceed to the next phase, the level of contingency needed for the project, and the predicted impact of FEED maturity on the success of follow-up phases. The primary objective of this paper focuses on FEED maturity and its impact on project performance in terms of cost change and schedule change. The authors collected data from 33 completed large industrial projects representing over $8.83 billion of total installed cost. A key result is that projects with high FEED maturity outperformed projects with low maturity by 20 percent in terms of cost growth in relation to the approved budget at Phase Gate 3.