Front End Planning: Your Key to a Successful Project

Front end planning is arguably the single most important process in the facility project life cycle. It is focused on creating a strong, early link between the business or mission need, project strategy, scope, cost, schedule, and maintaining that link unbroken throughout the project life. CII research indicates that well performed front end planning can reduce costs, lead to less project variability in terms of cost, schedule and operating characteristics, and increase the chance of meeting a project’s environmental and social goals. The research showed a direct correlation between the level of front end planning effort and project success.

This research found that upfront investment is required to front end plan a project, but the resulting savings are more than worth the investment. Rule of thumb is that FEP cost is typically 2.5% of total project cost (TPC), but will return on average 10% cost savings, 7% shorter schedule delivery, and 5% fewer changes. CII research also indicates that well performed front end planning can lead to less project variability in terms of cost, schedule, and operating characteristics, and increase the chance of meeting a project’s environmental and social goals. Also identified by the research is a set of critical success factors or “rules” of FEP (outlined under Key Findings below). Project teams and organizations that break these rules will pay the price in terms of disappointing results.

Alignment has also been recognized as an important factor during successful front end planning and is considered a CII Best Practice. Alignment is defined as "the condition where appropriate project participants are working within acceptable tolerances to develop and meet a uniformly defined and understood set of project objectives." For more information on alignment, refer to CII complimentary research publication, Alignment During Pre-Project Planning—A Key to Project Success, Version 2.1 (CII Implementation Resource 113-3).