> You gotta have buffers for bad weather, malfunctions, changing stuff when it turns out some worker did bad job, yadda yadda yadda
Private projects face the same issues, but do not necessarily stop for these reason. After all, time is money, and a dead construction site not running cost the owner money.
Heavy expensive machinery on private projects tends to be iddle too and planning of machinery is what I was responding to.
The construction site stops idle entirely for months issue is often that fund used to pay for construction dried out or got redirected. Or that there are legal issues to be sorted - that one happen with private companies too.
Additional work "needs to be put out to bid instead of using the on site contractor" because otherwise contractors would underestimate prices and then charge a lot more or predictable "excess". There does not even need to be bad intention originally, such system would simply favor contractor who makes bad estimates "naturally".
Private projects face the same issues, but do not necessarily stop for these reason. After all, time is money, and a dead construction site not running cost the owner money.