Eh - I work for a big SV company in a group that provides key software and hardware. If we have a schedule risk that can be mitigated by paying a 3rd party engineer a reasonable sum we could probably get it approved in a week. It would require at least exploring alternatives and quantifying the risk, but it's really not hard to get (reasonable amounts of prudently spent) money when your project is in the profit pipeline. I doubt it would have to go as high as a VP for approval.