WASHINGTON — Defense contractor KBR, which is under criminal investigation in the electrocution deaths of at least two U.S. soldiers in Iraq, including one from Western Pennsylvania, has been awarded a $35 million contract by the Pentagon to build an electrical distribution center and other projects there.

The announcement of the new KBR contract comes just months after the Pentagon, in strongly worded correspondence, rejected the company's explanation of serious mistakes in Iraq and its proposed improvements.

A senior Pentagon official, David J. Graff, cited the company's "continuing quality deficiencies" and said KBR executives were "not sufficiently in touch with the urgency or realities of what was actually occurring on the ground."

Graff rejected the company's claims that it wasn't required to follow U.S. electrical codes for its work on U.S. military facilities in Iraq. KBR has said it would cost an extra $560 million to refurbish buildings in Iraq used by the U.S. military, including Saddam Hussein's palaces, which among other problems are based on a 220-volt standard rather than the American 120-volt standard.

KBR announced last week it won a new $35.4 million contract from the Army Corps of Engineers to design and build a convoy support center at Camp Adder in southern Iraq. It will include a power plant, electrical distribution center, water purification and distribution systems, wastewater and information systems and road paving.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said the new KBR contract was inappropriate. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said he has formally asked the Corps of Engineers whether it was confident KBR could accomplish it and whether the Corps had any alternatives.

The Army has reclassified the electrocution death of Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, 24, of Shaler Township as a negligent homicide caused by KBR and two of its supervisors. Maseth's mother lives in Cranberry Township.