Ima­gi­ne a herd of 650 adult Asi­an ele­phants. Now ima­gi­ne lif­ting that enti­re herd off the ground with one gigan­tic hoist. That’s the 2,600-ton capa­ci­ty of one of the world’s big­gest con­s­truc­tion cra­nes — known to all who behold it as “Big Blue.” Intel uses the cra­ne to place steel infra­struc­tu­re for its D1X chip fac­to­ry expan­si­on in Hills­bo­ro, Oregon.

Owned and ope­ra­ted by Ken­ne­wick, Washing­ton-based Lamp­son Inter­na­tio­nal, Big Blue tra­vels the glo­be to con­s­truc­tion pro­jects that need some of the world’s hea­viest loads slung sky­ward. At 460 feet long, the crane’s main boom is 155 feet tal­ler than New York’s Sta­tue of Liberty.

In Hills­bo­ro, whe­re Big Blue arri­ved this spring dis­as­sem­bled on 100 semi­t­rai­ler trucks, Intel is gea­ring up to meet the incre­asing mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty for its advan­ced chips that run ever­y­thing from spraw­ling inter­net data cen­ters to thin-and-powerful laptops.

At D1X, Big Blue began its big job on a pre-dawn mor­ning this spring hois­ting a 200-foot-long, 277-ton dou­ble-truss frame – the first of 46 that com­pri­se the factory’s steel super­s­truc­tu­re. In addi­ti­on to the mons­ter beams, the D1X expan­si­on will be rein­forced with 24,000 tons of rebar — twice the weight of the Eif­fel Tower. Work on the D1X expan­si­on invol­ves more than 3,000 elec­tri­ci­ans, plum­bers, wel­ders and other trade workers, with phy­si­cal distancing enforced across the job site.

Ore­gon, with its 21,000 Intel employees, is home to the company’s lar­gest site.