"I remember one case quite clearly where the project's dollar estimate was identical to a local vendor in Australia yet the man hours were an order of magnitude

"I remember one case quite clearly where the project's dollar estimate was identical to a local vendor in Australia yet the man hours were an order of magnitude greater. Yet even then, there was organisational push-back on the local vendor due to their high hourly rate" That's very strange - I would have assumed that the code quality of the Australian outfit would be higher