They kind of addressed this by saying that they try to keep management billing hours quite low. Perhaps this low percentage would have been "enough" had the size of the project been bigger? Although, I think it'd be fair to argue that the designers should have been "trained" (i.e., with time not billed as "management" for a client's project) to stick to the project scope a bit better.

I get it though: my only experience has been with internal, full-time employees, and I see is given a fair amount of latitude to do exciting things and to experience small failures. It's a different mindset for external contractors, it seems.