The above prompts the question "why didn't the subcontractor submit a bid to be the primary contractor then?"
In all my experience of contracting and sub-contracting, it's a matter of scope. A subcontractor often has skills in one area, but not the whole piece. Example, prime contractor takes on responsibility for delivering a system/solution - they know a bit about security but are not specialists....so they subcontract the security element to a specialist company who live, eat, sleep & breathe security but who don't have wide enough scope to cover other aspects of the solution, or even have the scale to manage another bunch of subcontractors who do.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
