how is this affecting the quality of the infrastructure that gets built? the TCO for these projects is going up, but is the quality (read: reliability/time between failures) comparable to what you could expect from the older systems?
But there are also a lot of failures caused entirely by project management SNAFUs, poor communication between contractors on a project, inadequate testing, etc. that are completely avoidable and I personally as being largely caused by the diffusion of responsibility that occurs when a company is no longer capable of turning a wrench without hiring a contractor.