007 - Front-End Planning: How to Set Billion-Dollar Projects Up for Success with Roger Farish

🌐 Episode Short Description

Why do so many billion-dollar projects go off the rails—and what can you do before execution to prevent it? 🧭

Front-end planning expert Roger Farish joins Orion to unpack FEL, stage-gates, risk, and governance—and why the biggest influence on a project’s success happens long before you break ground.

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🧾 Episode Summary

In this episode of The Major Project Podcast, Orion sits down with Roger Farish, a front-end planning specialist with 25+ years of experience at Bechtel, Fluor, Linde Engineering, and Kiewit, delivering major capital projects in LNG, refining, petrochemicals, renewables, power, and mining. riverside_the_major project pod…

Roger walks through his path from mechanical engineer and field engineer to portfolio leader and, now, consultant—highlighting how each role reinforced one core lesson: the front end is where projects are won or lost.

He breaks down what Front-End Planning (FEP) actually is—FEL stages, stage-gate processes, “concept / select / define / feed / pre-feed”—and how best-practice frameworks from CII and AACE help owners make disciplined, data-informed investment decisions instead of “gut-feel” commitments. riverside_the_major project pod…

Roger explains tools like the Project Definition Rating Index (PDRI), how it measures scope maturity, and why facilitation matters when project managers are (understandably) biased to push scores down so their projects clear the next gate. He shares stories of uncovering gaps where deliverables were claimed “complete” but hadn’t even started, and how structured reviews surface misalignment before billions are committed. riverside_the_major project pod…

From there, they dive into:

• “Too big to start” mega-projects that are so large almost no EPC is willing to take on the risk—and how Roger helped one client shrink a project so at least two competitive bids were realistically possible.
• Using historical data to separate systemic risk from project-specific risk, even when owner data is messy or inconsistent—and why there’s always something to learn if you dig deep enough.
• The reality of execution bias, where projects gather political and emotional momentum that makes it hard to pause, re-scope, or walk away—even when the signals are flashing red. riverside_the_major project pod…

Roger also shares his views on AI in major projects: why a lot of “AI” tools today are really rules engines with new branding, why execution-phase use cases will likely mature faster than front-end ones, and how he’s already using AI as a teaching and mentoring assistant for younger engineers.

Finally, he offers career advice for students and mid-career professionals who want to move into front-end planning—covering the value of cross-discipline experience (field, startup, process, economics), and why a mix of engineering, finance, statistics, and project controls is such a powerful foundation. He closes by describing how his firm now supports owners, EPCs, and OEMs on estimating, scope definition, risk, governance, and FEL management across the front end of their capital portfolios. riverside_the_major project pod…

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🎧 You’ll Learn

• What Front-End Planning (FEP) actually is—and how FEL stages and stage gates fit together
• Why early decisions shape cost, schedule, and risk outcomes far more than tweaks during execution
• How tools like PDRI measure scope maturity and correlate with better cost and schedule performance
• How to recognize and counter execution bias and “too big to start” mega-projects
• Ways to use historical data to separate systemic risk from project-specific risk
• Where AI is (and isn’t yet) useful in front-end planning and mentoring
• How organizational culture and change management affect governance adoption
• Practical career paths into FEP—from field roles to process engineering to project controls
• Key best-practice resources: CII, AACE, and IPA’s Capital Projects