have been in the contractor side of this, and have had a couple of contracts written with me in mind, but... one had a twist.
Used to do tech training. Had a syllabus up on our website - "onsite training with topics X, Y and Z". A school put out an RFQ on this, and essentially used our syllabus (basically word for word). We'd talked on the phone - they wanted us to come there and do the training (relatively niche at the time).
Someone else submitted a bid using our syllabus and "won" - they were local, and so didn't have to include travel costs, and were 'cheaper'. They didn't have our material, but... were the "lowest bidder" so had to be chosen.
I've also had a couple projects 'single sourced' to me via govt purchasing process, and it always raises some eyebrows, but I'm generally the only contractor who would be qualified (because... I wrote the system years ago, it's very niche, not much budget, old tech, and no political will to pay to move it to something modern).
This is why the low and high bid are automatically thrown out, and then the remaining bidders are investigated for ability to actually deliver. For real world contracts change orders are where the real money is - that is places where your specification is wrong for some reason not known in advance and you will need to pay for the fix. The low bidders are experts in figuring out how meet the letter of the specs while building something that doesn't make sense (By spec the toilet drains pipes won't connect to the toilet, we can fix that for only $$$). A more reasonable contractor will see that and make the obvious fixes while for no extra charge, but not the low bidder - this makes the low bidder more expensive.
Used to do tech training. Had a syllabus up on our website - "onsite training with topics X, Y and Z". A school put out an RFQ on this, and essentially used our syllabus (basically word for word). We'd talked on the phone - they wanted us to come there and do the training (relatively niche at the time).
Someone else submitted a bid using our syllabus and "won" - they were local, and so didn't have to include travel costs, and were 'cheaper'. They didn't have our material, but... were the "lowest bidder" so had to be chosen.
I've also had a couple projects 'single sourced' to me via govt purchasing process, and it always raises some eyebrows, but I'm generally the only contractor who would be qualified (because... I wrote the system years ago, it's very niche, not much budget, old tech, and no political will to pay to move it to something modern).