Backlinks from ANSI site

A friend of mine got a site of a business which provide private fire security and supervision. His only competitor is a site with 12 backlinks. The problem is that 8 of these backlinks are from ANSI's site, and that is truly a powerful .gov site.
I'm a bit insecure about this. The domain of this competitor is 1year and 3 months old.
In your experience, is it possible to outrank it with traditional link building with a fresh new site (obviously I don't expect results in short times)? If I build manual backlinks, articles, social signals from good domains will I be able to outrank this competitor, or those links from ANSI are too overwhelming?
Besides those links my competitor's site has almost 0 Seo on page and off page.
Are these ANSI site too much, or am I able to beat this site without having .gov backlinks myself?

i highly doubt you will be able to outrank it, however there aren't impossible things

you need to ask will it be worth it at the end? coz you will need to throw really lots of efforts and money

I don't think all that effort will be worth it. The second spot will be fine, I think.

If I make my friend join ANSI, he will get the same links his competitor got (These links come from a page saying "here's the new members...").
If we get the same links his competitor got, we can play with the same weapons. In this case, considering that this guy probably doesn't even know of seo existence, I could have a chance to outrank it.
What do you think about it?