Bad human nature is always a risk when massive amounts of money is flowing. I'm not saying it's right what these private contractors have done, but all the massive but decidedly "necessary" government projects that inevitably require tons of private contract work just seem to be a complete joke -- the joke being that our even MORE massive but "necessary" government can't effectively manage the real consequences of the huge projects it proposes!
How did the government think things would go? "Hey, let's give this private company over here a billion dollars to do such and such, with relatively no strings attached. We can't really oversee them that well because the project we're mandating is so massive and because they're a private company, but heck, it's not our livelihoods we're risking if things don't go just so -- it's the American taxpayers!"
The government shouldn't be allowed to propose and outsource such grandiose projects without also taking the proper actions to minimize the risk of something going wrong when the outsourcing they are deciding to not have full control of goes bad. With such large projects, there just isn't any greater power to run crying to and bail us out if something goes wrong. Simply put, the less oversight the government has over these contractors, the bigger the risk they are taking on by moving forward with such massive projects, so they better prepare for the worst.