Don’t even start to plan unless you have a formalized vision of what the physical infrastructure is to accomplish from the point of view of the institutional mission and the science. Consider using as a project-development tool the concept of a pre-design report that captures the results of visioning sessions. Also, when doing visioning for science buildings, make your user group think of themselves as surrogate users and not the end users of the building.  This makes users focus on the next generation of building occupants and how science will be done in the future.

- From Tradeline’s Science Buildings Canada 2006 Conference