FEED Studies for Energy and Renewables: How to Boost Your Productivity

Tired of the tedious coordination and inconsistent data caused by a fragmented, serial FEED study process? 

Learn how today’s energy and renewable companies are reclaiming significant time, and unlocking greater expert productivity and engineering and cost reliability with XaitPorter.

The Innovation Imperative

The energy and renewables industry is constantly evolving, demanding faster, more accurate, and more compliant concept and Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) studies. However, the traditional approach to creating these large, complex documents often involves a time-consuming and error-prone manual process. 

As a seasoned engineer, scientist or project manager, you’ve no doubt witnessed the challenges first hand. Back-and-forth emails? Multiple versions of the same document? Errors and repetitious rework? 

You’re not alone. Here’s what our research finds are the biggest challenges:  

• Data Consistency across large volumes of complex technical information from various engineer sources. 
• Manual Coordination of multiple engineering experts across discipline silos, locations, and time zones..  
• Template Management and manually integrating diverse sets of technical data into a consistent template.   
• Manual Data Entry errors when copying and pasting data from previous projects into new FEED studies.  
• Regulations and Standards and complying with the right regulations for the region and project.    
• Time Constraints that rush experts and significantly impact the accuracy and quality of FEED studies.

Improved Efficiency and Quality

Forward-thinking energy and renewables companies are not taking these challenges lying down. In fact, some of our largest clients are leveraging XaitPorter to solve the problem.

Your team could achieve similar results: 

• Improved Accuracy: Eliminate data errors, inconsistencies, and omissions, and reduce the risk of conflicting information and misunderstandings.  
• Streamlined Process: Eliminate manual data entry, hand-off delays, and rework, and free up engineers to focus on study research, analysis, and content.    
• Reduced Costs: Eliminate manual team coordination, technical data integration, and repetitive layout and formatting tasks. 
• Improved Quality: Achieve more comprehensive and insightful content for greater confidence in engineering design, project feasibility, and economic viability.
• Easier Compliance: Identify potential region, location, and project issues early in the process and minimize the risk of overlooked compliance details.  
• Faster Turnaround: Significantly reduce the time it takes to produce high-quality, in-depth FEED studies

XaitPorter: The Power Dynamic 

With XaitPorter, you’ve streamlined your proposal and licensing application process. You’ve eliminated repetitive tasks like manual coordination, data integration and formatting. Experts are collaborating real-time, eliminating errors and oversights, and producing higher quality content clients appreciate. You’ve reclaimed significant time to do more with your same staff. 

Now it’s time to streamline your concept and FEED Study development process in the same manner, and elevate your results. 

Here’s how clients are leveraging their XaitPorter investment to unlock greater FEED Study efficiency, productivity and reliability. 

Project Initiation

A FEED Study, like a proposal document or licensing application, begins with a business need or opportunity, such as increasing production capacity or exploring new reserves. For example, a potential oil field is identified through geological surveys and seismic data analysis. Based on the need, you clearly define the scope and objectives, including the specific deliverables and the desired outcomes. 

This phase is critical because it lays the foundation for detailed engineering design. Misinformation and misunderstandings now can cause confusion, wasted resources, and missed deadlines. 

Here is how clients are using XaitPorter to achieve the comprehensive accuracy they need at this stage to identify potential issues and reduce project risk:

• A Pre-designed Project Template quickly establishes the workspace and document structure, as well as layout and formatting. It includes pre-defined location-specific regulations and assumptions and is automatically set to the appropriate language.
• By Centralizing the Project, everyone works from a single source of truth, aligning resources, improving communications, enhancing flexibility, and saving time. 
• Master Content, such as methodologies and assumptions, is easily leveraged from the content library for consistency, and can be set to allow editing or maintaining the original. 
• Enterprise security and permission grants and restricts document access to confidential information, such as priority data and intellectual property, while ensuring only authorized individuals have access and can make changes. For example, only specific individuals, such as project engineers and technical experts have access to confidential information. 

Assessment, Design, and Development

With an accurate foundation laid, your team can quickly focus on assessment and design. For example, defining process flow diagrams and process simulations, designing piping and instrumentation diagrams, and defining design information for foundations, structures, and site layout. Plus, estimating equipment, materials, labor, and construction costs, and assessing potential safety, environmental, and operational risks. 

The decisions you make here can significantly impact the project’s overall cost, schedule, and technical feasibility. Siloed dependencies can significantly impact productivity by creating communication breakdowns and errors that hinder development.

Here’s how XaitPorter clients facilitate expert collaboration to accelerate development and elevate content reliability: 

• Co-authoring the same document establishes transparency and knowledge sharing among engineers, scientists, and project managers. For example, the mechanical engineer, who designs the equipment and piping systems, can immediately see information on fluid properties, flow rates, and pressure drops established by the process engineer, and ensure proper equipment sizing and selection.
• Real-time Collaboration provide continuous inputs for rapid adjustments and improvements. For example, control engineers can point out any missing instrumentation or control strategies, while the safety experts can identify potential hazards and recommend mitigation measures. This collaboration ensures accuracy early on to avoid costly design changes and delays. 
• Automated Workflow eliminates manual coordination and hand-off delays by advancing tasks to the appropriate expert automatically. For example, once the process engineer has defined the process flow, equipment requirements, and operating conditions, the document is automatically routed to the mechanical engineer who designs the equipment and piping systems.
• Real-time Reviews provide feedback for improving consistency and study maturity. For example, project managers spot inconsistencies such conflicting data or design assumptions. And business reviewers offer suggestions for improvement, such as clarifying technical details or strengthening the economic analysis.
• Centralized Document Control automatically saves work, tracks changes and manages version control, maintaining a clear record of document revisions and ensuring only the latest version is used. It also allows for version comparison, audits, and rollback. For example, multiple engineers making frequent changes access the same version and make updates without overwriting content. 

FEED Study Integration

Once the design and assessment phase is complete, the final FEED Study document is prepared, summarizing the key findings, recommendations, and design parameters. This involves consolidating information from the various engineering disciplines, converting data into a suitable format for analysis and presentation, and formatting for consistency and readability.  

Manually consolidating large volumes of complex technical information is a time-consuming task, prone to human error. A single mistake or omission can significantly impact the accuracy and reliability of your FEED Study, derailing the project.  

XaitPorter eliminates these challenges for our clients by: 

• Automating information compilation and integration eliminates manual effort and human error to improve efficiency. For example, information from multiple engineering sources is automatically compiled and integrated by working on different sections in the same document. 
• Automating layout and formatting, eliminates manual effort, reducing the time spent on manual formatting, and reformatting, tasks. For example, data from multiple engineering sources are automatically formatted for consistency according to brand and project standards. Plus, formatting remains consistent throughout development, so engineers and reviewers focus on the strategic and technical aspects.
• Automating production significantly reduces the time required to produce these complex documents. For example, click a button and produce the final FEED Study, or any combination of its information. Need to make a layout or formatting change? Simply change the Layout Template and it automatically updates the entire document.

Your Next Move

Your FEED studies are mission critical. They serve as a crucial foundation for major projects. They provide a detailed blueprint for the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) phases. They also help to reduce costs, mitigate risks, and ensure projects are delivered on time and within budget. 

You don’t have time for a traditional, serial development process fraught with expert disconnects and content errors that introduce risks and overruns and threatens the final investment decision (FID). 

That’s why global energy and renewable giants such as Aker Solutions, Genesis, IO Consulting, and Vår Energi leverage XaitPorter for their FEED Studies:

• Unlock greater productivity while retaining complete control over all aspects of the writing process, compliance, and content integration. 
• Harness global expertise and experience and collaborate real-time for more in-depth analysis and accurate assessments, designs, and estimates you can rely on.
• Eliminate manual effort, including task coordination and data entry errors, for greater accuracy. 
• Spend considerably less time setting up documents, compiling information, and maintaining layout and formatting. 
• Faster turnaround time that hits deadlines and reclaims significant time for more projects without compromising quality.  

FEED Studies are the cornerstone of successful energy and renewables projects, providing the critical foundation for sound decision-making and efficient project execution. By leveraging the power of document automation and collaboration tools like XaitPorter, organizations streamline their processes, enhance efficiency, and improve the quality of their deliverables.