Let IPA Help Guide You Through Project Development

The strongest predictor of project success is the level of Front-End Loading (FEL) achieved at authorization. However, reaching this level of definition can be a difficult task. IPA’s FEL Workshop can aid project teams and project sponsors in achieving Best Practical definition at authorization.

IPA's FEL Workshop stresses the key project factors that drive ultimate project outcomes. The workshop is tailored to address the front-end issues for a specific project or for a number of small projects. Breakout sessions are used extensively to provide an opportunity for the project's different functional groups to raise pertinent issues. 

FEL Workshops can be held in any of the FEL phases, but are most effective when done in FEL 1 and FEL 2. 

Scope 

IPA's FEL Workshop presents the fundamentals of FEL and focuses on bringing the effective principles of project management and definition to a project-specific level. The workshop also includes a discussion of a number of tools that can be used to facilitate the project team's direction through preliminary engineering.

FEL Workshops cover three main areas that are critical in getting projects off to a good start: 

• Are business and project objectives clear?
• Are business and project objectives aligned? 

In addition, through the FEL Workshop a “roadmap” will be developed to ensure that a Best Practical level of FEL can be achieved before authorization. 

Benefits 

The FEL Workshop teaches the essential knowledge and skills required to organize, plan, and execute FEL for capital projects of all sizes. Companies will receive many benefits from an FEL Workshop, including: 

• Making the needs of the business the primary driver for capital project investment
• Assigning project responsibility to teams with multidisciplinary membership
• Improving the capital productivity of projects by using the best available technology
• Eliminating non-income-producing investment
• Minimizing changes during project execution to shorten project cycle time, reduce costs, and improve early production rates  

Process

A typical workshop is held over 2 days. However, a dialog (and possible meeting) between IPA and the project manager must occur to customize the workshop to the project's needs and to emphasize the areas that are critical to the project. As part of this dialog, the project manager shares with IPA any available project information (project objectives, project execution plan, etc.). IPA's FEL Workshop format is intended to be interactive and makes extensive use of breakout groups.

Deliverables 

Key tools presented during the workshop include a precedence diagram and FEL checklist. At the conclusion of the workshop, IPA encourages each project team to map their project on the precedence diagram and to prepare an FEL checklist to begin planning their front-end activities.