> In the private sector you can say to the end client, the architect, or owner's rep that contractor X has a slightly lower bid than contractor Y but based on past jobs contractor Y is more reliable (and their bid is actually capturing all their needed scope). Then the client can choose to spend slightly more upfront to pick the contractor that their consultant advised them too.

Isn't the standard something like lowest qualified bid or lowest responsible bid? I forget the exact wording. I've definitely seen bids for city projects that all came in a pretty tight range and the absolute lowest was not selected. Sometimes it's some reasoning like well Skanska already built these 7 bridges so they can more easily build the next 5 even though their bid is 4% higher.