Nicholas, roads don't get built with vertical cuttings any more because of the dangers of collapse. In the Snowy Mountains, road crews are constantly clearing rock as the freeze/thaw cycle shatters the rock faces. The worst areas are covered in steel mesh rock bolted to the walls to try to keep things together. Improved engineering methods now mean roads have sloped sides on cuttings that resist erosion and control rock slides. It's cheaper in the long run.

The roads I described are an example of construction contractors finding ways to cut their costs with the tab having to be picked up during commissioning or coming out of future maintenance and not always by honest means.

Another example is a prime contractor (I won't name them as they are well known) doing 180km of overhead pipework in a mine processing plant. They put in for completion, got paid and left site without fitting the hold down brackets. This was 40% of the cost and they got away with it. I was working beside the contractors who got the job to finish off. They were happy to get work but the owner was less happy with the extra $80m cost. That's one of the stories I can talk about. There are plenty more like it that I can't. Heavy construction is full of stories like this. Cheers