The George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) was established by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as??a multi-user, research infrastructure for earthquake engineering??research, innovation, and education through a facility construction phase during 2000-2004, followed by operations of the infrastructure??to support research and education activities from??October 2004 through September 2014.?? NEES is currently operated under a five-year NSF cooperative agreement award with Purdue University??that expires on??September??30, 2014.????For more information about NEES, please see http://www.nees.org. Through this solicitation, NSF provides the opportunity for the earthquake engineering community to recompete to operate the "second generation" of NEES, hereinafter referred to in this solicitation as "NEES2."?? Proposals are solicited by NSF's Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation to provide, manage, operate, and maintain NEES2 to??support frontier earthquake engineering research, innovation, education, and workforce development??for the five-year period from October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2019 [i.e., fiscal year (FY) 2015-FY 2019]. ??Recompeted through this solicitation for NEES2 are the following components:?? (a) a network-wide NEES2 management office (NMO) with the Principal Investigator (PI)/Network Director located at the lead institution, (b) four to six experimental facilities that provide the most critical and technically advanced capabilities and data needed by the earthquake engineering research community for transformative research, plus a post-earthquake, rapid response research (PERRR) facility, (c) community-driven, production-quality??cyberinfrastructure, and (d) education and community outreach activities.?? This solicitation does not separately compete the components. Instead,??it requests??proposals to??integrate all these components into a cohesive earthquake engineering research infrastructure for FY 2015-FY 2019.?? NSF??intends to??award??one cooperative agreement to a lead institution for NEES2 operations with a start date of October 1, 2014, and a duration of up to five years.??