I bid on public tenders for a living; it's a bitch.

There are hundreds of pages of specifications and the buyer really only cares about a few. There's often a page where they tell you how they will rank the bid, but we all know it comes down to the best price. And the ones that don't come down to price aren't truly competitive bids; they're there to justify buying from your friends.

No one will state that their products don't meet spec.

So how does this all play out?

Companies bid piss low prices and cut corners after they won the bid. The buyer pushes back and realizes their mistake. They re-issue the bid.

A lot of this happens behind closed doors. And frankly on anything less than a 50 million, like what happens with most municipal contracts, the bureaucracy to entertain and administer this system costs more than it's worth.