Front-end loading (FEL), also referred to as Front-End Engineering Design (FEED), Front End Planning (FEP), pre-project planning (PPP), and early project planning, is the process for conceptual development of projects in processing industries such as upstream oil and gas, petrochemical, natural gas refining, extractive metallurgy, waste-to-energy, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals.
This involves developing sufficient strategic information with which owners can address risk and make decisions to commit resources in order to maximize the potential for success.
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).
The quality of front-end planning can be improved through the use of PDRI (Project Definition Rating Index) as a part of the stage-gate process.
For each stage, typical deliverables are listed given below : Another FEL methodology splits the project into four phases: