The facilities and equipment section answers a question the reviewer carries through your entire proposal: can this company physically do the work it just promised? It is not a real estate listing. It is evidence that the bench, instrument, clean room, or test chamber your work plan depends on will be available during the period of performance, and that someone qualified will be standing in front of it.

Match every resource to a task

Read your own work plan and mark each task that needs a physical resource. Then describe those resources in the same order, so a reviewer can trace the connection without hunting for it. For each one, name the equipment, say where it sits, and state your access to it.

Vague breadth is worse than narrow specifics. A fully equipped engineering laboratory tells a reviewer nothing. A thermal chamber rated from -40 to 150 °C (-40 to 302 °F), in your leased space, available full time to this project, tells them the temperature cycling task in month two is real. Include software licenses, computing resources, and controlled storage where the plan needs them, because a data-heavy aim with no described computing environment reads as unplanned. This section is where feasibility stops being an assertion, and feasibility is exactly what a federal review panel is scoring.

When the equipment is not yours

Most small companies do not own everything their project needs, and no reviewer expects them to. What matters is whether the arrangement is real and documented rather than hopeful. The common structures:

  • University core facilities. Fee-for-service access to instruments a startup could never justify buying. Name the facility, the specific instrument, and the recharge arrangement, and include a letter from the facility director if the solicitation allows one. This is often the first step toward a broader research partnership with a university lab.
  • Subaward partners. The partner's own facilities description travels with their budget, so make sure you actually collect it. Under STTR a research institution partner is structural rather than optional, which is one of the differences between SBIR and STTR worth settling before you pick a program.
  • Contract labs and job shops. Machining, environmental testing, sterilization, or certification work you buy by the quote. Identify the type of vendor and show that you have priced it.
  • Shared makerspaces and incubators. Perfectly legitimate, but say what your membership entitles you to and whether machine access is guaranteed or first-come.

Why we will purchase it is the weakest answer

A purchase is a plan. An existing arrangement is evidence. When feasibility rests on equipment you intend to buy, the reviewer inherits three risks at once: procurement lead time inside a short performance period, installation and qualification time nobody scheduled, and the chance that a capital line crowds out the research the award was meant to fund. Agencies also differ on what equipment may be bought on an award, so read the current solicitation instead of assuming.

If you genuinely must buy something, shorten the exposure: get a quote, put the purchase in month one, and name the outside service provider you would fall back on if delivery slipped. Keep the figure identical to the one in your budget, because a mismatch between the two is a familiar entry on the list of budget mistakes that sink a grant application.

Projects House helps hardware and device companies plan the build, test, and validation work behind an SBIR proposal, including which tasks realistically belong in an outside facility. Tell us what you are developing through the contact form.