“The students are stinking because there is no water,” Lieutenant Selah added.

A company spokeswoman, Erin Kuhlman, said that Parsons, which is based in Pasadena, Calif., had strictly abided by the terms of the contract it had received from the United States Army Corps of Engineers to do the work at the academy.

“Parsons completed its work at the Baghdad Police College in the spring of 2006,” Ms. Kuhlman said, adding that the Army Corps accepted the work as completed at about the same time.

By July 2006, the company had been notified of problems with the plumbing. Parsons put the Army Corps, in effect the company’s client, in touch with the Iraqi subcontractors who actually carried out the construction, so that the Iraqis could fulfill their warranty to redress shortcomings in the work, Ms. Kuhlman said.

Image Cadets in their bunks at the Baghdad police academy. Credit... Joao Silva for The New York Times

“After we were notified by our customer of the issues, our customer worked directly with the subcontractor on the warranty work and Parsons has not been asked to provide any additional assistance on this project or with the warranty work,” Ms. Kuhlman said.

But dire problems with the project were discovered in inspections in August and September 2006 by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent agency led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr. His report on the inspections severely criticized not only Parsons but also the Army Corps for oversight that the report said was so weak as to be almost nonexistent in some respects.

Mr. Bowen’s report also stated that inspectors had found “indications of potential fraud” in the project and had referred the case to its investigative division.