[GLenH]

Government: money expires after two years. Which means that if you come in under budget, you have to find something else to spend the money on - which is sometimes needed infrastructure, like upgraded computers, but is more often whatever happens to be in stock at Supply. Or you dump it on a contract with a services contractor with whom you already have a contract vehicle in place. Or you lose it. But you can't save it. You can't hold onto it to do more work on the project after the two years is up.

You also can't extend the deadline for project completion in case of unforeseen events. If you run out of time, but not money, you just have to stop, because the money evaporates.

[ortusdux]

A friend of mine was a radio tech and he was ordered to put in a 1.2mil PO for a new transmitter because a wire was frayed. They could have just replaced the wire for 20$, but then they would have lost that 1.2mil off the next year's budget.

[falcolas]

It's not just the government. I was brought into building out an operations budget at a startup a few years back, and found out that it was happening there too.

Yes, the startup is still going.