Then, having done construction projects so many times before, they can lay out a schedule with contingencies and keep it....

I worked construction during college. Two of my close friends are in industrial construction here. (They both work quite a bit with Intel, so it's not small construction projects either.)

We've talked about the "software should be like construction!" fallacy a few times. We laugh about it, mostly because it's a rare job where you show up on the first day without a stack of change requests a foot high.