> If you always give the contract to the company that offers the lowest price, don't be surprised that it eventually gets too low to cover the real costs.

It's a known problem no one seems to care about. The Swiss do it better: They throw the cheapest and most expensive offers out and pick a contractor from the middle price range. Seems to work well for them in most cases.

> 80k for a project that likely consists of months of filing for permits, coordinating tens of people and machines?

It was a small bridge for pedestrians and cyclists that was closed about 5 weeks before they took it down, which took the crane just a couple hours.

It was a project as simple as it gets and they still went way over budget while also leaving half the bridge standing. I just wish I could say this was an outlier, but it's commonplace around here.