It wasn't the lowest bidder. It was brought outside of the normal contract process and issued sole source to one of his buddies under a "unusual and compelling urgency".

If they actually did the normal contracting process, they probably would of gotten a half dozen bids for a few hundred k for the job that was done and a handful of other proposals in the tens millions saying your SOW is stupid instead we propose to line the entire thing in copper sheeting for $11M or we propose to install a giant pool filtration system for $6M, which we will service for $500k per year of this contract, or some other hair brained proposal.