I work in one of these consulting firms. We are indeed, a huge part of the problem. Many design projects by municipalities get picked up by consulting firms, billing at 3x the rate. These budgets end up very bloated to give firms their desired profit. Government in-house design teams are usually understaffed and undertrained, leading to poor results that then result in more costly change orders down the road.

The simple solution would be to have in-house design teams to be robust, and offer very competitive salaries and benefits to compete with these consulting firms. They need to stop giving in to the indulgence of these consulting firms.

Consulting firms are not necessarily all horrible. But I've seen enough to be pretty grossed out by their practices. Many of my coworkers have left to smaller ones or left to be part of municipalities. There's good people and talent in these firms, we are at the mercy of the MBA PMC class who charge much more than we do for God knows what and are not even freaking engineers/scientists.