By June 1942, the Manhattan Project had reached the stage where the construction of production facilities could be contemplated. On June 25, 1942, the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) S-1 Executive Committee deliberated on where they should be located. Moving directly to a megawatt production plant looked like a big step, given that many industrial processes do not easily scale from the laboratory to production size. An intermediate step of building a pilot plant was considered prudent. For the pilot plutonium separation plant, a site was wanted close to the Metallurgical Laboratory, where the research was being carried out, but for reasons of safety and security, it was not desirable to locate the facilities in a densely populated area like Chicago.