So this is just a poor choice of words then??
Ok, you've never worked for a company that actually builds into the scheduling and QC and whatever division some time and/or money to cover the inevitable delays/cost overruns??? I can say, unfortunately hehehe, that 20+ years in the working world that the majority of it has been in the corporate world. I've been a project manager for several national level programs, and in my current position I've been Art Director on quite a few international ones. In all of these there has always been built-in buffers whether it's time or money or both.
Yes I know it can be difficult to have departments come together. Try coordinating art submittals from a 3rd party thats on the other side of the world with a production company thats on the complete opposite side from the other company... and then one of the companies servers goes down for several days which puts everyone behind schedule. If the project leader hasn't thought ahead to foresee these kinds of problems then... well bad things happen, hehe.
And true VPs are there to buffer the CEO, but then as the saying goes shiesten rolls downhill, hehehe..
) that that is the exception to the rule. In most cases, if funds or time run out - and they ALWAYS do, money is typically bled from the next quarter's project budget and corners are cut to meet the next project milestone. Often times staff is cut or reassigned, individual workloads are IN-creased, and engineers add 10-20 hours more a week without overtime because they're classified as salary-exempt. There's always a little "robbing Peter to pay Paul" going on in engineering OEMs... 
