Any government project is required to have a bidding phase with multiple options for nearly every required item so that every company has a fair chance to compete.

The issue here isn’t that there is a bidding process, it’s that only 1 company makes the thing, and that company isn’t even an SoE so it has no reason not to charge infinity dollars while delivering as little as possible.

It’s not uncommon for a large, complex project to spend 4+ years in the bidding phase alone, getting rebid over and over with dozens of addendums and RFI’s working out all the kinks, without even mentioning the time spent in the planning phase beforehand and the lengthy construction phase afterward.

I am not familiar with the specifics of how large complex projects happen over here, but it’s not magic, it’s insane that we’ve seen them lap us in every productive measure, and aren’t trying to study what they’re doing right.