One of the tallest pieces of heavy equipment did some heavy lifting Thursday as construction continues on west Omaha’s 500-acre Heartland Preserve Development.

Some businesses in the development are already up and running, and they got a good look at a piece of equipment that towered over the construction area.

Construction crews had to bring in a special piece of equipment to help build a unique building.

This crane is more than 400 feet tall and weighs more than 1.3 million pounds. It took more than 50 truckloads to bring the unassembled crane to Omaha.

This is the largest crane ever used in the Omaha metro.

“It’s an unusual crane that’s typically used on wind farms where you have to get really high up there… but on buildings, you normally never need a crane like this large,” said Justin Boeck with JE Dunn Construction.

The tall crane is needed to work on the applied underwriters building, the building will sit on the company’s campus that will cover about fifty acres of the 500-acre Heartwood Preserve Development in west Omaha.

“The building itself has three stories all the levels on this building are not your typical what you would see on a normal building they’re much taller, a lot more open,” said Bart Emanuel with Applied Underwriters.

The style of the building is unique and is the vision of company founder Steve Menzies.

“This is where you’re seeing his vision of spanning 110 feet without any interior columns whatsoever in the building which is unique nobody does this typically,” said Bart Emanuel. “It’s going to look like a football field… you know without any columns, 110 by 300 feet technically without any columns.”

Applied Underwriters is behind the 500-acre project that they call the largest urban development in the country. A city within a city, the development will feature homes, retail space, restaurants, hotel rooms, and entertainment. The California based company is making a major investment in the Omaha community.

“The people here in Omaha are just good people they’re hard-working people and they found this is where we want to actually have the company grow.”