Developing countries have adopted public–private partnerships for water infrastructure utilities because of rapid urbanisation and economic growth along with the public sector’s lack of capital and technical capacity. However, water public–private partnerships have shown mixed results; many of them have encountered problems and even failed. Motivated by such failures, this study aims to explore the reasons behind failed water public–private partnerships in the last two and a half decades. Cases of 16 failed water public–private partnerships from different developing countries and regions have been compiled and thoroughly investigated, which disclosed a number of potential failure reasons: soaring tariffs, non-payment of bills, incapability of the public sector, poor technical performance of the private sector, macroeconomic instability, conflicts between public and private sectors, social and political opposition to privatisation, lack of transparency, fluctuations in exchange rates, change in related laws and others. The failure reasons identified are further analysed to develop their causal interrelationships through event mapping. Outputs of this study would facilitate stakeholders of water public–private partnership in taking appropriate actions to overcome these failure causes and ensure the success of future projects.
We demonstrate a cost-effective embossing process for the fabrication of waveguide-embedded optical printed circuit boards (OPCBs). The process involves the application of a polydimethylsiloxane mold for the production of polymer waveguides on a copper-clad FR4 substrate followed by the conventional lamination process. The embossing process is carefully tailored for the commercial polymer materials that are developed specifically to withstand the high temperature and high pressure environment during lamination. With this process, we are able to produce highquality waveguide-embedded OPCBs with good repeatability. Our typical OPCB samples, each of which consists of 12 130-mm long fully embedded channel waveguides with a core size of approximately 50 × 50 μm and a pitch of 250 μm, show an average optical loss in the range 0.16-0.22 dB/cm at the wavelength 850 nm. The OPCBs survive the reflow process at 245 • C with a small change in the optical loss. The embossing process can be readily integrated with the existing PCB manufacturing process and thus offers a practical solution to mass production of OPCBs.Index Terms-Optical interconnect, optical polymer, optical printed circuit board (OPCB), polymer waveguide, waveguide fabrication.
Promoting the ‘spirit of mutual trust and co-operation’ has long been regarded as the ‘pillar’ of NEC contracts, which reflects the recommendation of the Latham report. Undoubtedly, this clause serves as a good catalyst that suppresses adversarial behaviour among parties. Nevertheless, this clause has recently sparked hot debates concerning its legal implication and interpretation. Some commenters claim that the clause refers to good faith obligation, while others suggest that it does not. This paper aims to conduct a review regarding this issue and provides a rough guideline for practitioners.
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