I agree with amin-sadig in terms of people misconstruing the data, it unethical obviously. We live in a corrupted world and people will do anything to get ahead or to look “good”. I agree that cost may not be uniform throughout the duration of the project because many factors are to be accounted and to know all factors is impossible since the world we live in is not perfect. If I were planning a project I would also ask for more money than I actually needed because you can always give back that surplus or hold on to it for other issues that might arise. And if you never use the cash one hopes that you will give it back to whomever you borrowed it from.