My last job was probably more ant colony like than most. We had jobs, someone quoted them, someone measured them, someone put them in the schedule, several of us did the jobs, the finished jobs were delivered and installed. All without anyone really delegating. We just followed the schedule and the paperwork. Even the boss didn't always know the details of the schedule or what we did. It all flowed pretty smoothly most of the time. We all just kind of knew what to do. It kind of broke down a bit when things went wrong though, it was was hard to figure out sometimes where and when problems happened, and in that case someone usually made an authoritative decision, but it wasn't that often.
That works from what I've observed at my company for jobs on a timetable < 6 months, or a shutdown/repair industrial type job.
Once you start getting into 5 phase, 2.5 year long projects it helps having a dedicated PM overseeing every detail and coordinating between the engineer/owners/superintendents.
Heaven forbid you get into a government contract where now you have 10x the paperwork/submittals and RFI's compared to a private job, which it really does help to have one person pretty much memorize the spec book and know where to find everything when needed.
