AE is a special case. Procurement law for public agencies in the US requires qualifications-based selection for professional services. The price is then negotiated, but it's basically whatever the consultant says it is as long as they transparently report labor hours. This leads to the majority of effort being labor-intensive make-work pushed to expensive labor categories. There is no market process for discovering efficient service providers. This is part of the reason why workflows for transportation infrastructure design haven't improved in 30 years and probably won't until the legal landscape changes.
