Abstract:Facilities, which have a major impact on a broad segment of a scientific or engineering discipline,are essential for science and engineering enterprises. As an independent federal agency, onemajor responsibility of National Science Foundation (NSF) is to finance facilities through the MREFC Accountand the R&RA Account. Generally, the MREFC Account is used to fund the acquisition, construction,commissioning, and upgrading of facilities, whilethe R&RAAccount can be used to support planning, conceptualdesign, development, operations and maintenance, as well asscientific research. Taking the facilitiesfunded by NSF as examples, the article introduces the activities occurring during the life-cycle stage of the facility andrequirements for oversight. In general, the life-cycle stage is divided into Conceptual Design Stage, PreliminaryDesign/Readiness Stage, Final Design/Board Approved Stage, Construction Stage and Post-constructionStages, and by the whole life-cycle stage, the roles and respective responsibilities of NSF staff, theawardee institution and other organizations are described in detail. Based on these introductions, the articleattempts to give some suggestions on management of facilities in China for the future development.