Assessing the Maturity and Accuracy of FEED to Support Phase-gate Approvals

Assessing the maturity and accuracy of front end engineering design (FEED) to support phase-gate approvals is a critical task with significant impact on overall project success. Poor scope definition during FEED has been shown to be a major cause of project failure. The FEED MATRS tool directly addresses this problem; it is an easy-to-use tool to enhance the predictability of cost and change order performance of large industrial projects.  

FEED MATRS (which its authors pronounce "feed matters") builds on the methodology of PDRI and other CII tools. FEED MATRS was developed to help project teams effectively measure the engineering design effort during FEED. The tool consists of 46 engineering design elements and 27 accuracy factors that should be addressed during FEP. FEED MATRS generates two separate scores for a project: a maturity score and an accuracy score. Both are normalized to a 0-100 scale and then plotted on a maturity-accuracy matrix. The matrix is divided into four quadrants and gives users a high-level understanding of where their large industrial project stands at the end of detailed scope or Phase Gate 3.  

In order to test the FEED MATRS tool, RT-331 organized four industry-sponsored workshops at various locations across the United States and Canada. Overall, the projects in this sample were submitted by industry professionals from 31 different organizations, with an average project cost of approximately US $276 million. The sample of 33 projects represented over $8.83 billion in total installed cost, with projects completed in six countries and nine U.S. states.  The RT-331 research shows that FEED maturity and accuracy values are effective in predicting project success. Projects with high maturity and high accuracy outperformed those with low maturity and low accuracy by 24 percent in terms of cost performance and by 12 percent in terms of change performance. FEED MATRS was also tested on current in-progress projects and helped participants identify critical planning issues during the FEED of their projects. FEED MATRS provides a number of important uses and functions for the project team.  

Follow-on research could complete the same assessment for infrastructure and building projects.