Anecdata: while i was in a tiny tiny software company, we got an in at a large auto manufacturer. They said they had been trying to get someone to do that job for like 2 years.

The job was of the 'two people 3 months' magnitude. The procurement system was also of the 'two people 3 months' magnitude so we simply gave up.

In the article's case, they could have done this even before coding assistants. It would have cost the estimated 5 million instead of 850k, but that's still 10x less than the 54 million.