Get used to it. I used to do federal contracting. The biggest contract I was on was to do a bunch of work for one of the smaller three letter agencies.
The total amount of work encompassed many areas, and as such was a long, expensive project (to my standards, but not necessarily for government work) -- I think the project was slated to take approximately five years and cost approximately $50 million.
Despite incessant changes, we were closing in on finishing the project on time and on budget, but in year 4, the project was scrapped (after having spent the majority of the money) because nobody had planned on how to fund it in year 6, and the organization decided that instead of spending the remaining money going through the motions, they'd just pocket what was left over and apply it to their operating budget, which was (naturally) under-funded.
We built a smallish data center, procured water-proof routers, cameras, built websites and data processing workflows, all on the assumption that at the end of year 5, they'd actually USE the things we built and bought for them. Turns out, that was naive.
The total amount of work encompassed many areas, and as such was a long, expensive project (to my standards, but not necessarily for government work) -- I think the project was slated to take approximately five years and cost approximately $50 million.
Despite incessant changes, we were closing in on finishing the project on time and on budget, but in year 4, the project was scrapped (after having spent the majority of the money) because nobody had planned on how to fund it in year 6, and the organization decided that instead of spending the remaining money going through the motions, they'd just pocket what was left over and apply it to their operating budget, which was (naturally) under-funded.
We built a smallish data center, procured water-proof routers, cameras, built websites and data processing workflows, all on the assumption that at the end of year 5, they'd actually USE the things we built and bought for them. Turns out, that was naive.