The NEES program will provide an unprecedented infrastructure for research and education, consisting of networked and geographically distributed resources for experimentation, computation, model-based simulation, data management, and communication. Rather than placing all of these resources at a single location, NSF has leveraged its investment and facilitated research and education integration by distributing the shared-use equipment among 15 universities throughout the US. To insure that the nation's researchers can effectively use this equipment, equipment sites will be operated as shared-use facilities, and NEES will be implemented as a network-enabled collaboratory. As such, members of the earthquake engineering community will be able to interact with one another, access unique, next generation instruments and equipment, share data and computational resources, and retrieve information from digital libraries without regard to geographical location. Currently, four major activities are being undertaken to bring NEES on line. These include constructing the shared-use Equipment Sites, developing standards and advanced networking capabilities to connect the powerful new experimental and computational resources with the earthquake engineering community as well as to the public at large, developing a community-backed research collaboratory and consortium to carryout and manage NEES activities, and identifying a research agenda that addresses high priority needs.