In the US at least, there is a hard cutoff at a certain price point. Beyond that price point the only legal way is to run through the procurement office with al

In the US at least, there is a hard cutoff at a certain price point. Beyond that price point the only legal way is to run through the procurement office with all that entails- written specs, detailed contracts, long term execution, etc. Because the procurement process is so complicated, the only companies that WIN the process are those that are optimized for this (rather then, say, writing software or building roads). Often the contracting companies will not even plan on doing actual work, they only specialize in GETTING work and subcontracting it out. The whole thing is designed to prevent some mid level beauracrat from kicking his brother in law some project for 10% more then "market rate" ... instead we pay 300% more because every project has to get rolled up into some monolithic thing that's big enough for the big contracting companies to get involved.