None of the consultants I know of would estimate a time requirement (other than something incredibly loose) for any kind of job bigger than a few hours. The MO seems to be some version of:
"You give me [the consulting firm] a maximum per week that you can afford on this, and we will have a weekly stand up where we talk about what was completed, what will be completed by next week, and how we can allocate resources to accomplish these things."
To me this seems like an incredibly good way of managing this relationship. However, plenty of people I talk to on the other side (trying to hire consultants) insist that they need a full bid of how much time a project will take.
I almost always tell these people that I can't really give them that answer, and that I also to be wary of anybody who actually responds to this question.
Am I the strange one here?
I almost wonder if this is the source of the overage that is being talked about in this article. They're quoting them $foo hours per week, when in reality it will take $foo/4. So when they get the work and finish it at $foo/2, they don't lose money.
That seems really dishonest to me.