The term "flexibility" will lack consistent meaning among the various participants in the planning and design process. The work of three authors has been compiled below to clarify the term "flexibility" as it relates to the design process for energy-efficient research laboratories. Their work and that of others, e.g., Pena et al. (1977), develops some useful distinctions to help understand alternative types of flexibility. Watson, 1990 and Lindner, 1990, make the distinctions in the sections below. The distinctions are the following:
