I think this is the fifth *@%#ing time I've posted this question (2 day intervals or longer of course between postings) and I've yet to get any answer, much less good, complete, or varied ones. If you have constructive advice as to how I might change the question to elicit an answer, please let me know (in a PM), but barring that, I'm going to just keep posting it until some of my curiosity is sated!
In reading history, one often finds reference to structures raised by people communally, by rulers, or by private individuals for various reasons. How in practice would this process look like? How much in terms of resources would projects of various scales take? I'm interested primarily in structures for human use rather than monuments or statues. I'm also somewhat interested in e.g. water and sewage projects, or dredging projects, but I still am most interested in buildings that people would walk around in.
Were building materials acquired on a lump basis, or were there regularly-operating quarries etc? I know early Egyptian monumental building could involve sponsored more-or-less-one-of expeditions to certain sources of valued stone, etc, but by the classical era how did that change?
What about workers/talent? Were people full time manual laboring builders? What about the skilled labor? Were they project-by-project with some other work between projects or people who did this full time? How far afield would people go to, say, acquire the services of a foreign architect of note, if such existed?
Would project sponsors need to provide for future upkeep of the structure? What happened when they fell into disuse or disrepair?
How much would be calculated out versus done by experience in terms of planning a viable construction project? How often did these projects result in an unsafe building that would later fail? Did the contemporaries understand the reasons for the failure of their buildings properly? What sorts of cares would be taken to construct with an eye to surviving water damage of various forms? Fire? Earthquake?
Please, tell me about the practice of getting things built in Classical Mediterranean (and classical India or "Asia" [meaning middle east] if that's your area!)
You know, I clicked on this thinking to myself "I swear I've seen this question like five times." Part of the problem may be that its too broad for any one person to answer. That being said, I'll try to give an answer for the place and period with which I'm most familiar (Eastern Mediterranean, Hellenistic and Early Imperial periods). Maybe others will chip in to round out the answer.
In the Hellenistic world, the vast majority of public building is funded through voluntary contributions from wealthy men. The practice is called euergetism in modern scholarship (deriving from the Greek εὐεργετέω, "to do good"). So if a city decided it wanted to repair and expand its walls (or build a temple or a gymnasium or some other such project), it would try to mooch money out of any and all people with money to spare.
Kings were great sources of money, if they could be convinced to part with it. A city that had done a favor for a king in the past might send emissaries to his court to request funds. The city might also send an embassy to any of the king's friends (a general category encompassing every major governmental official) who were well disposed towards it. Kings were often willing to give funds, but they were rarely willing to volunteer them. Of the 350 or so known instances of royal benefaction, only 6 were gifts given spontaneously by the king. Every other time the recipient had to ask first (and thereby put himself in the king's debt).
If no king was available, the next step was to hit up local rich men. Occasionally an entire project would be funded by a single person. Protogenes was a wealthy citizen of Olbia, who during the late third or early second century BC gave his city 1900 gold pieces to build a wall, 1700 gold pieces to bribe a barbarian warlord to go away, and 6000 gold pieces for various other needs. The city by contrast, defaulted on a loan of 100 gold pieces (Protogenes paid off the debt so the sacred vessels in the temples wouldn't have to be melted down to pay it).
If there were no super rich men around, then the city had to rely on the good will of the merely wealthy. These men would usually contribute only a small portion of the funds needed for a project. The contribution list is called an epidoseis. Men who exceeded their contribution, tended to loudly broadcast that fact (in one instance, a benefactor has inscribed the precise amount he over spent on a wall he helped pay for, down to the quarter obol). Men who did not pay up what they promised might be shamed by having their names placed in a public inscription that announced their misdeed. Thus when Dicaeogenes defaulted on a promise of 300 drachmas to Athens in the fourth century, his name was inscribed on a list of those “who voluntarily promised the people to contribute money for the salvation of the city and failed to pay the amounts promised.” (Isaeus 5.37-38). Because there could be a substantial delay between the time a man agreed to a benefaction and the time he was actually required to pay up, defaulting has a recurring problem. It therefore became common to have would-be benefactors make a solemn oath before the assembly that they would do as they had promised and for this oath to be recorded in the city archives. This is practice is known as pollicitation.
Naturally, cities did have more coercive means by which to get funds when the situation demanded. Liturgies were obligations placed involuntarily upon wealthy citizens to fund certain needs (say a public festival, or the pay for the crew of a trireme). But voluntary contributions were by far the more common means of securing funds in the Hellenistic period, especially for building projects. To spur contributions the city had at its disposal a carrot and a stick. The carrot took the form of various public honors (dedicatory inscriptions, public panegyrics, statues, etc.). The stick was the tremendous amount of social pressure that the city could bring to bear on a rich man to play the part of a good citizen and contribute without actually forcing him to contribute. Take the hapless Dicaeogenes. He promised the 300 drachmas after being specifically asked to make a contribution during a public assembly. While legally he wasn't obligated to pay a single obol, there was probably no way he could have realistically said no in front of so many of his fellow citizens.
No, onwards to the material aspects, and I'll try to keep this brief. Hellenistic public architecture is almost invariably stone, and that stone is almost invariably locally quarried (with perhaps some embellishments or facades in expensive imported stone). I'm not well acquainted enough with labor practices to speak to your questions on that front, expect to say that certain architects did achieve a degree of fame (for example, Dinocrates, the architect who helped Alexander plan Alexandria by Egypt). There was an understanding about the dangers of earthquakes and fires, but I can't think of any time in which a building was said to have been designed to be disaster-proof. About the closest thing I can think of to that effect is that when the Senate was debating which city in Asia should have the right to build a temple to Tiberius, Halicarnassus was given some serious consideration because "its inhabitants affirmed that for twelve hundred years their homes had not been shaken by an earthquake and that the foundations of their temple were on the living rock." (Tacitus Annals 4.55).