Contract Templates Research Articles

Practice and Improvement of Agent Construction System in Hydraulic Engineering

This paper introduces development of the agent construction system in China and overview of the South-to-North Water Diversion Middle Route Project. The current practical application of three management modes of direct management，agent construction system(ACS) and commissioning system in the Beijing-Shijiazhuang section of the South-to-North Water Diversion Middle Route Project is analyzed, and some of the advantages of the ACS is pointed out. In the process of practice of the ACS, several existent key problems are discussed, such as the choice of the agent construction units, defective section division of the agent construction, unclear responsibilities, rights and obligations of the agent construction unit, the unreasonable agent construction cost and so on. Then,some constructive improvement measures are put forward , such as to improve the supervision and inspection mechanism, to issue the regulations and standard contract templates of agent construction, to establish incentive and punishment mechanism, to strengthen qualification management of the agent construction unit and to actively cultivate the project management company.Through exploration and analysis on the ACS of the concrete practice and applied research, a reference is provided for further promotion and application of the ACS in the hydraulic engineering in China and the direction of development is indicated.

A trace-based model for multiparty contracts

In this article we present a model for multiparty contracts in which contract conformance is defined abstractly as a property on traces. A key feature of our model is blame assignment, which means that for a given contract, every breach is attributed to a set of parties. We show that blame assignment is compositional by defining contract conjunction and contract disjunction. Moreover, to specify real-world contracts, we introduce the contract specification language CSL with an operational semantics. We show that each CSL contract has a counterpart in our trace-based model and from the operational semantics we derive a run-time monitor. CSL overcomes limitations of previously proposed formalisms for specifying contracts by supporting: (history sensitive and conditional) commitments, parametrised contract templates, relative and absolute temporal constraints, potentially infinite contracts, and in-place arithmetic expressions. Finally, we illustrate the general applicability of CSL by formalising in CSL various contracts from different domains.

Contracting in the days of eBusiness

Putting electronic business on a sound foundation --- model theoretically as well as technologically --- has to be seen as a central challenge for research as well as for commercial development. This paper concentrates on the discovery and the negotiation phase of concluding an agreement based on a contract. We present a methodology how to come seamlessly from a many-to-many relationship in the discovery phase to a one-to-one relationship in the contract negotiation phase. Making the content of the contracts persistent is achieved by reconstructing contract templates by means of mereologic (logic of the whole-part relation). Possibly nested sub-structures of the contract template are taken as a basis for negotiation in a dialogical way. For the negotiation itself the contract templates are extended by implications (logical) and sequences (topical).

Accounting Measurement Rules in UK Bank Loan Contracts

Abstract This paper examines the financial ratio covenants found in a sample of 25 UK bank loan contracts and 13 contract templates. Minimum net worth, interest cover and gearing are the most widely occurring ratios. GAAP are used as the basis for all definitions. The definitions of net worth, borrowings and interest are frequently modified in a conservative direction, drawing on information both from the notes to published accounts and from outside those accounts. The definitions of profit, current assets and current liabilities, however, rarely deviate from GAAP. Thus some definitions restrict corporate management's scope to avoid covenant violation through appropriate accounting method choice while other definitions appear to permit it. Furthermore the widespread use of ‘rolling’ GAAP means that standard setters need to bear in mind that new standards can cause covenant violations. The findings of this study are consistent with those of previous research in the US and Australia.