My experience in the 80s & 90s in large companies, the approach you describe above was often used in negotiations between the line-of-business managers and the IT department.

The business managers loved it because they frequently used the process to justify hiring external resources that could do much more in less time.

The IT department sometimes liked it because they were often back-logged for months and getting projects off their plate was a good thing.

Politically, IT departments did not want to lose control – so they used the need to coordinate all projects to fit within their corporate IT infrastructure to justify managing the external IT resources.

The compromise seemed to work.

Especially given a year of layoffs, CI departments are probably understaffed relative to the internal demand for their services…so it’s probably the best time to price their services…. and, at the same time, demonstrate how better CI tools and access to new information services would make them more productive (faster) and demonstrate the savings using the same model you describe.