Skip to content

Front-end engineering design (FEED)

Last reviewed:
The engineering stage between concept and detailed design in which a project is defined thoroughly enough to fix its cost estimate, support the investment decision and form the basis of EPC tendering.

FEED takes a selected concept and engineers it to the point of commitment: process design frozen in PFDs and P&IDs, major equipment specified and often priced by vendors, plot plan and layouts settled, the estimate matured to the class the investment decision requires, and the execution strategy — contracting model, schedule, long-lead plan — written down. Its deliverable is not a buildable design; it is a definable, priceable, tenderable one.

FEED's economic function is risk transfer. When an EPC contractor bids lump-sum, it prices the FEED package; the completeness and internal consistency of that package determine how much risk premium sits in every bid, and after award, every gap in FEED comes back as a change order with the contractor holding the pen. Money withheld from FEED is not saved; it is borrowed from execution at a poor rate of interest.

The stage also has a discipline attached: after FEED, the design is supposed to be frozen. Projects that keep "improving" the definition during EPC discover that they are running FEED and execution simultaneously, which is the most expensive possible way to do either.

Related reading

See this workflow in practice.

Book a demo to see how Armeta applies this concept across the drawings, standards, specifications, and project data that define the work.