Bechtel, kbr and black-water—Americas civilian "army" in Iraq—stand accused of sweetheart contracts or botched projects or worse. Add to this infamous squad Parsons Corp., a $2.7 billion (sales) engineering company headquartered in Pasadena, Calif., the second-largest reconstruction contractor in Iraq, after KBR.rnGive the company some credit, though: It has managed to bounce back resoundingly after severe setbacks. The Special Inspector General on Iraq Reconstruction found last year, for example, that of 150 hospitals that Parsons was paid $186 million to build, only 15 had been completed. At a police academy it built in Baghdad, light fixtures didn't work because they were full of wastewater leaking fromrnimproperly installed sewage pipes. The Army terminated $2 billion worth of contracts "for convenience," a catchall euphemism for cutting a project when it's in the feds' interest. But Iraq has defeated everyone's best intentions. "The security situation made it impossible to do the work the way we would normally do it," says James McNulty, Parsons' chief executive.
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