Quantifying FEED Maturity and Its Impact on Project Performance in Large Industrial Projects

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 project owner expects to be able to make informed decisions, including cost and schedule predictions, to determine whether the project should proceed to detailed design. Project stakeholders also expect to make informed decisions to allocate the level of contingency needed for the project and to predict the success of follow-up phases. The primary objective of this paper focuses on quantifying FEED maturity and its impact on project performance in terms of cost change and other key metrics. The authors collected data from 33 completed large industrial projects representing over $8.83 billion of total installed cost. The research followed a scientific research methodology that included a literature review, focus groups, an industry survey, data collection workshops, and statistical analysis of project performance. The contributions of this work include (1) developing an objective method to consistently measure and manage FEED maturity and (2) quantifying how projects with high FEED maturity outperformed projects with low maturity by 20% in terms of cost growth in relation to the approved budget.