I've often seen the lack in in-house expertise bite the owning entities very early in the process: "Oh god even the lowest bid came in 20% above the Engineer's Estimate!"
Because the engineer(s) doing the estimate in-house didn't have enough broad experience in the various disciplines to accurately price the project to begin with, it was allocated less funding than necessary when it was put out to bid and the entire process starts out too lean for the needs of the project.
Because the engineer(s) doing the estimate in-house didn't have enough broad experience in the various disciplines to accurately price the project to begin with, it was allocated less funding than necessary when it was put out to bid and the entire process starts out too lean for the needs of the project.