As we all know the idea of project management is to keep cost as low a possible. In some projects, issues do come up in a project that requires funds to correct and the funds are not contained in the original budget. This brings up the concept of "contingency funds", most of my projects have at least a 10% contingency added to the budget. The contingency funds are invaluable when there are issues that need to be corrected to maintain the project timeline. Do any of you have experiences working with contingency funds? Do you require authorization to use the funds?