A customer in Houston paid for the same AV system three times. The purchase ran the way many do. The RFP went out, the bids came back, and the lowest price won.
Read an RFP and you will find part numbers, warranty terms, acceptable alternates, labor rates, and references. Read the same document for who owns coordination between trades, who validates the assumptions in the design, who handles support after closeout, who decides when the drawings are wrong, and who protects the opening date. Those questions are rarely in there, and they are the ones that determine whether the system works.
A few years ago my team was sent an RFP from a large company in Houston. We wanted the work. The document was written to be extremely cost conscious, and the design as issued wouldn't have worked. Key components were missing, and what was specified was not enterprise class: consumer displays, gear already at end of life, equipment better suited to a home office than to a critical space. Our RFIs went unanswered, so we priced a working system with the missing pieces included, plus a second option built on equipment that matched the design intent rather than the budget. We lost.
The service calls started 18 months later. The AV was getting in the way of the work instead of supporting it. Within 24 months we were replacing systems across much of the building. That customer paid three times. First for a system that did not work, then for the repairs that kept it limping, and eventually for the system they should have bought at the start. The total ran past double the cost of doing it right.
Nobody in that process made an unreasonable decision. Plenty of organizations are required to buy this way, and a buyer bound to a low bid cannot weigh judgment against price. The RFP asked what things cost, and the low bidder gave the most accurate answer to that question.
The lowest price answers the question that was asked. The best integrator answers the question the project will eventually ask.