Retrospective look on front-end planning: A comprehensive literature review of 30 years of research

Academics and practitioners have paid close attention to front-end planning research, especially in the construction industry. It is known with many acronyms including pre-project planning and front-end loading. Since 1994, Construction Industry Institute (CII) has set front-end planning as one of the main research topic areas in their knowledge structure. A lot of research related to front-end planning and project scope definition has been conducted since then. However, there lacks a comprehensive review of the current studies on the topic. Thus, the objective of this research was to undertake a comprehensive literature review of papers related to front-end planning. Reviewing 83 selected papers, this research raises several important issues regarding front-end planning such as the position of front-end planning in project life cycle, the differentiation between front-end planning and project planning, the significance of front-end planning, the front-end planning organization management, the front-end planning phases, the challenges in front-end planning implementation, and the identification of research gaps in front-end planning. The findings of this research contribute to further understanding of front-end planning and would be useful for practitioners and academics to conduct further empirical studies on the subject matter.