Workshop Background

All workshop instruction, presentations, and supplementary course materials are rooted in BTS’s decades of experience evaluating project and project systems, and conducting quantitative research into capital project issues and trends.BTS maintains a proprietary database with information on more than 16,000 projects on which to base its analyses and studies.

Key Benefits

Facilitated by experienced BTS staff, the FEL workshop is the perfect opportunity for the project’s different functional groups to raise pertinent project issues and risk. Additionally, upon completion of the FEL Workshop, participants will have gained the following:

• Essential knowledge and skills for organizing, planning, and executing the FEL action plan
• FEL roadmap for guiding the project team through essential FEL activities
• FEL checklist for identifying the key FEL deliverables

The workshop is designed to include all functions involved in the project. This includes representation from business and operations, along with key owner(s) project management personnel. The number of contractors participating should be limited to only key players. To ensure interaction among participants, the optimal workshop size is 15 to 20 participants. It is recommend that a subset of participants be identified in advance to consolidate the results of the workshop with the FEL roadmap and checklists produced in the workshop.

Topics Covered

Core Activity: BTS facilitators work with the project team in the initial road mapping of their project based on a precedence diagram (see below for example), sharing key deliverables for each phase of the project and for each scope. The road mapping activity includes the use of an FEL Checklist that helps the team identify key activities that might have been overlooked, and begin developing an action plan for complet-ing the remaining key front-end activities. Additional activities and topics include:

Risk Management

• Approaches to ris assessment exercise
• SWOT analysis
• PEST analysis

Establishing Alignment

• Business and Engineering Alignment Meeting (BEAM)
• Business and project objectives alignment exercise

Team Development

• Team development and interface management planning
• RACI chart development
• Effective project team structure charting
• Engaging appropriate functions discussion

Other Topics

• Timing Value Improving Practices correctly
• Commercializing new technology
• Accelerating cycle time
• Working in programs
• Establishing a contracting strategy