What I do is similar, and our customers are in house so we have some latitude. We've got fairly loose standards about how we build most things, and usually more than one option - but the finished product has rigid requirements. We get to "equivalent or better" some things, but even knowing that is kind of fucky. Grade 8 hardware is better than grade 5, right? Except for safety critical shit. Then you need stress disposition to go to grade 8.

We've lost a lot of old peeps to golden handshakes and being mad at the company/union. In a few years my org lost an absurd number of years of experience. Think thousands.