Jim Harkness

Jim Harkness is the Maryland Transportation Authority chief engineer interviewed in The tech transforming Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge about rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge after its collapse.

In the source, Harkness explains the replacement bridge through civil-engineering operations rather than spectacle: a higher, longer cable-stayed bridge with 600-foot towers, mechanical access, elevators, Structural Health Monitoring, and data that can be compared with computational models. His key point is that Sensor-Driven Infrastructure Maintenance can make bridge behavior under real traffic and [[BridgeLoadCapacity|load]] conditions more visible to engineers.

Connections

• Maryland Transportation Authority - Harkness’s organization in the episode.
• Francis Scott Key Bridge - rebuild project he explains.
• Structural Health Monitoring and Sensor-Driven Infrastructure Maintenance - monitoring and maintenance concepts he grounds.
• Port of Baltimore - freight context for the bridge’s heavier-load expectations.