Groves summoned British help, in the form of Wallace Akers and fifteen members of the British gaseous diffusion project, who would review the progress made thus far. Their verdict was that while the new barrier was potentially superior, Keith's undertaking to build a new facility to produce the new barrier in just four months, produce all the barriers required in another four and have the production facility up and running in just twelve "would be something of a miraculous achievement". On 16 January 1944, Groves ruled in favor of the Johnson barrier. Johnson built a pilot plant for the new process at the Nash Building. Taylor analyzed the sample barriers produced and pronounced only 5percent of them to be of acceptable quality. Edward Mack Jr. created his own pilot plant at Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia, and Groves obtained of nickel from the International Nickel Company. With plenty of nickel to work with, by April 1944, both pilot plants were producing barriers of acceptable quality 45 percent of the time.