In this paper, recent researches about basic theory and applications of EFEM are reviewed, which indicate that the development direction of this method tend to predict the dynamic response of complex structures under the complex environments. Then, towarding to this tendency, the achievements of our research group are presented, which focus on predict the dynamical response of actual complex mechanical structures excited by complex external excitation in practical. There are three main aspects are referred: the first section is that the EFEM to predict the response of complex structures is developed by us when the power flow transfer of multi-waves considered, such as the cylindrical shell and truncated conical shell, and this method help us to obtain the local detail response of complex structures in mid and high frequency range; the second part is that we extend the EFEM to predict the vibro-acoustical characteristics of complex structures under the complex excitations, including the fluctuate pressure load and the acoustic load in reverberation chamber; the last section is that we develop the EFEM solver and the application platform, which facilitate the further practical applications of EFEM greatly. At the end of this paper, the problems to be solved and feasible research contents in the future of EFEM are pointed out briefly.