Wherever there's a complex chain of independent workers (a government plan checker, inspector, a planner, a surveyor, an engineer, machine operators, a landscaper, a drain layer, a lawyer, ....) then the reality is that unforeseen nuance and conflicting priorities are ever compounding.
It's ideal to have an uber-specialist, an experienced and respected senior overseer who knows the industry and the project inside-out in both theory and practice, dedicated to the project. That gets things going. It's also rare and expensive - there are a lot more development projects than there are such individuals. They are powerful cards coveted by successful owning developers.
Hey if there's some delay caused by your team you can always just go back to the gov with shaking the money tin and explaining some 'unexpected outcomes'. The fact it's the same outcome every project is a feature not a bug.
if project realistically costs $100M and should take 3 years - it won't be approved due to budgetary and other political reasons.
Much easier to announce a project as $30M that can be done in 1 year, and intentionally skip over planning, and contingencies+complications.
Plan for naively simple project, like a Wordpress website, even if it is for is amazon.com.
When the project SNAFUs, go back to customer and use sunken cost fallacy to get more budget & time, until customer runs out of either Money (budget) or Patience (time), then complete the project and move on to the next "Grande Project"
