[krapht]

I've seen some small firms crash and burn too, though. The problem is small firms are easy-come, easy-go; they don't have enough reputation at stake. Not sure what a good solution is.

[cmcaleer]

You could have contracted 5 small firms for £400k each (which, for this project seems frankly seems excessive) and even if a couple failed to deliver you'd have gotten 3 separate products to choose the best quality one from, £148k to legally chase up the firms who failed to deliver, and still had £2 million left over.

I agree a good solution isn't easy to come up with, but the status quo is certainly an outrageously awful one.

[lmm]

The large firms' reputation isn't really at stake though. They keep doing crap like this and it never harms their ability to get more contracts.

[deaux]

There are dozens of "small firms" with plenty of reputation at stake. Or how about a "medium-sized firm". There's quite a few, probably a few hundred-thousand, options inbetween "PWC" and "my mate's nephew studying computer science".