I guarantee that the contractors involved were loaded with a significant number of Java & Microsoft certified developers. Furthermore, I'd guarantee that the B

I guarantee that the contractors involved were loaded with a significant number of Java & Microsoft certified developers. Furthermore, I'd guarantee that the Big Dig, et al, were loaded with certified "real" engineers. Certification (even some fancy "project management" certification) doesn't get you any guarantees of project quality as a whole. If anything, I'd expect a focus on certification to decrease quality. Those things are expensive & time-consuming and the only ones who invest in them are the people who expect to be in that consulting ecosystem for a long time. There are processes, not certifications, that result in generally high-quality projects (see NASA's processes) at the cost of being incredibly slow and expensive.