We also had multiple contractors working full-time for months on a CI project that was projected before it began to save us at most a few thousand dollars a year. In the end they half-delivered a poorly-built system everyone hated, and I forced the abandonment of the project and we went back to the old system.
It was the pet project of another team-lead, that no-one else wanted. Group decision making is bizarre.
The last 7 years of my life as an SRE. It's maddening.