Managing Overall Project Costs Through Front End Loading
Managing project costs is required throughout the entire project lifecycle, but the biggest impact can be made in the early stages of the project.
The largest amount of project expenditure occurs during the execution phase and the smallest during the concept and development stages. It is the decisions made during the concept and development stages of the project that determine the overall cost of the execution phase of the project. Similarly, the cost of scope change increases exponentially the later they are made in the project life cycle. The Project team can take the opportunity to concentrate on Front End Loading (FEL) the project during these early stages to set the rest of the project up for success. The figure below shows the benefits of FEL at the start of the project.
Opportunities to focus on during FEL
The aim of the FEL stage is to complete sufficient project work to ensure the project objectives can be met at project completion while minimising the occurrence of project scope changes during the execution stage. Some tasks that can be focussed on to achieve this are:
- Agree and document stakeholder requirements early in the project.
- Complete the design to a sufficient level to ensure change is minimised later in the project.
- Develop a project scope and design that meets the stakeholder budget requirements.
- Ensure scopes of works being prepared for tender are accurate and detailed.
- Use costing methods appropriate to the project stage to obtain a sufficient level of costing accuracy.
- Manage project risk by running risk assessment workshops and implementing appropriate actions to control the risks.
- Keep stakeholders informed and involved during the FEL process so that there are no surprises for them when the project reaches executions stage.
Rapallo Capability
Rapallo has helped clients manage their project costs ranging from stakeholder engagement, complete project management, risk management, writing scopes of works, tendering and tender evaluation. For more details of Rapallo’s capability visit our website at Engineering & Projects | rapallo.com.au.
