Critical Activities in the Front-End Planning Process

Previous research conducted by the Construction Industry Institute (CII) and others has demonstrated the value of front-end planning as it impacts project success. A recently completed research project funded by CII, described in this paper, examines ways to improve information flow through the front-end planning process. This paper focuses on one specific objective of this research project, namely to isolate and closely examine the information critical activities within the front-end planning process. The front-end planning process was carefully diagrammed as consisting of 33 distinct activities, each with its own information flow entities and interactions. Fifty-one questionnaire survey forms were analyzed to obtain data for the 33 activities that included activity duration, resources expended, and the extent to which information was available to perform the activity. The 51 projects were then grouped according to survey respondents’ perceptions as to whether the front-end planning process was executed more or less effectively. An analysis of the data concluded with a degree of statistical significance that seven of the 33 activities have some impact on achieving project success. In addition, statistically significant differences were uncovered with respect to the extent that information was available for selected activities, and survey respondent perceptions with respect to how efficiently the activity was performed. These seven activities are involved in planning the following areas: Public relations, start up, quality and safety, the project execution plan, and project scope definition. Other activities for which information was frequently not available and/or for which considerable resources were expended relate to preliminary cost estimating and the development of a funding plan. A second survey form was forwarded to the original survey participants to obtain more specific information with respect to the information categories and interfaces associated with the critical activities that were identified in the original survey. This survey indicated problem areas including inadequate scope definition, risk identification and mitigation, minimal resource allocation for task execution, unclear definitions of roles and responsibilities, and ineffective external communication mechanisms.