The entire construction industry is basically based around hiring the lowest bidder, especially in public works, and other than giant projects where somehow corruption allows them to collect more than their bid, these jobs basically get performed to a decent standard by the lowest bidder.
But even in programming, you can't tell me there arent well earned reputations out there.
Yes I have, and my family has for their entire life, and I created an entire saas for the construction industry that has enough paying customers to support myself easily.
Then you know, the people who are allowed to bid are only qualified bidders - unless you absolutely want to guarantee legal shitshows and disasters.
And the lowest bidder of them makes it up in change orders or the like in most cases. Or is legitimately the biggest outfit in the area and can make it up in economies of scale.
And even then, PR disasters can and do still happen. And do happen all the time. Even at the national level, but especially at the local level.
Yes, 'qualified bidders'. And what are the qualifications to bid to do the cabinets on a 6 million dollar public works/commercial building, which means the building might have $300,000+ of cabinets at most? Basically zero qualifications besides having a license. And with public works, yes the GCs will basically go with the lowest bidder. And while change orders do happen, it's the GCs job to get them to stick to their bid or otherwise they're just burning their own money.
I'm not just lying. Decades of experience in this. Yes construction basically lowest bidder outside of some private construction where relationships count for a bit, but even then the subs with relationships will get squeezed to match the lowest bidder.