Cross organizational communication in current business environments is highly dynamic, process driven and web centric. The web services paradigm is emerging as a powerful new technology solution to facilitate complex interactions between heterogeneous and autonomous systems within the enterprise and often between trading partners. Although the industry is inundated with initiatives on web services, most are heavily focussed on the underlying specification platforms and technology components. We see a great need and potential for developing a formal framework for service oriented process communication. The design of such a formal framework is the focus of this project. Project outcomes not only hold great potential to contribute to fundamental research questions in process specification, validation and ontological evaluation, but will also deliver significant impact on related technologies of messaging middleware, integration platforms and workflow management systems.