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Recently in Florida a developer picked a contractor to work with other than us.  When the project was designed and that contractor gave firm prices, cost was over $11 million vs. the budget price of $7.5 million.  Because of the disparity, the client decided to competitively bid the project with three contractors, including us, and with Value Engineering, we were able to get the project under $8 million, but at great expense due to significant required Value Engineering which required redesign and cost.

The question that was asked was whether this process had trained the customer to bid his projects in the future with commoditizing contractors.  My opinion is that it is quite the opposite.  The cost of the time for re-bidding, the cost and time of redesign, and the aggravation of going through this whole process most likely taught the client that the original process was the right one, but the wrong contractor was selected.  We'll see if this is true.