I believe that would be quite a few people who would choose to work for public projects rather than as consultants, simply because doing something that is relevant to society can be quite fulfilling.
The main problem in my opinion, is that it is impossible to have that on the local level. Multibillion-dollar project at rare events, even if you develop that talent locally, you will never need it again.
I think the solution would be government employed large project professionals on the federal level.
It should be doable at the state level, though. If a state isn't large enough to have consistent, large-scale projects, they probably shouldn't be an independent state.
Heck, it can be even smaller than that. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is regularly working on extremely large scale projects, and maintaining the ones they built.
The main problem in my opinion, is that it is impossible to have that on the local level. Multibillion-dollar project at rare events, even if you develop that talent locally, you will never need it again.
I think the solution would be government employed large project professionals on the federal level.