would tend to be much less than in the commercial world. Being late on a revenue generating project, such as a refinery (or even a baseball stadium), could expose you to liability for the owners loss of revenue. On the government side, it would generally expose you to only the governments extra cost of supervision, including housing, space rental, etc., which as you say is generally stated as a cost per day. Approval for bidding a job with LDs at my employer can only be done at the executive level, though if the job is big enough, BD would work up calculations to show the project upsides and downsides, to justify if the work is worth pursuing. Commercially we propose incentives and dis-incentives, so if we finish a job early, there is a bonus and if late, there are penalties. LDs are only a dis-incentive, therefore per policy are a no bid without an executive override.