Front-End Loading (FEL) or Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) refers to including robust planning and design early in a project's lifecycle when changes are less costly. It typically applies to large, capital-intensive projects like petrochemical plants. FEL divides the early design process into three stages (FEL 1-3) with increasing levels of detail in deliverables like equipment design, layout, and cost estimates. FEED establishes the key operating parameters and equipment for the plant to meet objectives like reliability and efficiency. Defining this design basis upfront helps reduce risks and costs compared to making changes later.
Front-End Loading (FEL) or Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) refers to including robust planning and design early in a project's lifecycle when changes are less costly. It typically applies to large, capital-intensive projects like petrochemical plants. FEL divides the early design process into three stages (FEL 1-3) with increasing levels of detail in deliverables like equipment design, layout, and cost estimates. FEED establishes the key operating parameters and equipment for the plant to meet objectives like reliability and efficiency. Defining this design basis upfront helps reduce risks and costs compared to making changes later.
Front-End Loading (FEL) or Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) refers to including robust planning and design early in a project's lifecycle when changes are less costly. It typically applies to large, capital-intensive projects like petrochemical plants. FEL divides the early design process into three stages (FEL 1-3) with increasing levels of detail in deliverables like equipment design, layout, and cost estimates. FEED establishes the key operating parameters and equipment for the plant to meet objectives like reliability and efficiency. Defining this design basis upfront helps reduce risks and costs compared to making changes later.
Front-End Loading (FEL) or Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) refers to including robust planning and design early in a project's lifecycle when changes are less costly. It typically applies to large, capital-intensive projects like petrochemical plants. FEL divides the early design process into three stages (FEL 1-3) with increasing levels of detail in deliverables like equipment design, layout, and cost estimates. FEED establishes the key operating parameters and equipment for the plant to meet objectives like reliability and efficiency. Defining this design basis upfront helps reduce risks and costs compared to making changes later.
Front-End Loading (FEL) is the process for conceptual development of
processing industry projects. Example of processing industry are petrochemical, refining, pharmaceutical. Front-End Loading is also referred to as Pre-Project Planning (PPP) or Front-End Engineering Design (FEED).Overview
Expanding on the above definition, Front-End Loading refers to including robust
planning and design early in a project's lifecycle (i.e., the "Front End" of a project), at a time when the ability to influence changes in design is relatively high and the cost to make those changes is relatively low. It typically applies to industries with highly capital intensive, long lifecycle projects (i.e., hundreds of millions or billions of dollars over several years before any revenue is produced). Though it often adds a small amount of time and cost to the early portion of a project, these costs are minor compared to the alternative of the costs and effort required to make changes at a later stage in the project.
It also typically uses a Stage-Gate process, whereby a project must pass through formal Gates at well defined milestones within the project's lifecycle before receiving funding to proceed to the next Stage of work.
FEL Stages
It is common industry practice to divide Front-End Loading activities into three stages: FEL-1, FEL-2, and FEL-3. For each stage, typical deliverables are listed below.
FEL-1 FEL-2 FEL-3
Purchase Ready Major
Preliminary Equipment Specifications Equipment Design Material Definitive Estimate Preliminary Layout Balance Project Execution Plan Preliminary Energy Balance Preliminary 3D Model Schedule Electrical Equipment List Project Charter Line List Preliminary Estimate Instrument Index
The very front end of every large design project is critical to the long-term success or failure of the plant. While the business plan identifies the economic opportunity, the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) will establish the set of process operating conditions and equipment to achieve the level of reliability, efficiency, and safety required. This design phase sets the direction for the rest of the project. Because it is so critical to the future success or failure of the overall objectives, we feel our clients make the wise choice by purchasing proven licensed processes or selecting a firm like ours which specializes in process design engineering.
When the design basis is complete, we typically have the following information defined: Raw material specifications Plant capacity requirements Product specifications Critical plant operating parameters Available utilities specifications Individual unit operations performance requirements Process regulatory requirements All other operating goals and constraints desired by the plant owners/operators/engineers
Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) is a broad-encompassing term that includes all engineering design activities for your project. By breaking these activities out and executing them earlier in the project, you can take advantage of better scope definition to reduce risk, and therefore the cost, associated with your project.
Once the FEED Study is completed, you can then decide on a strategy for implementing a project. You might decide to execute your project as a typical capital investment project, or you may consider the option of including the project as a component of a Technical Support Agreement.
