Engineers, led by Chief Engineer James Harkness, are diligently working to rebuild the Key Bridge in Baltimore after the tragic collapse in March 2024. A cable-stayed bridge, it will be among the longest in the U.S. when completed in 2028, a massive and costly project with extensive planning and design efforts ongoing.
MDTA render
Artistic daytime aerial view of the Francis Scott Key Bridge with downtown Baltimore and the Port of Baltimore in the background.
As you read these words, the new Francis Scott Key Bridge is being built.
Not out on the Patapsco River, where vestiges of the old structure linger as a quiet reminder of its demise one year ago in the early morning hours of March 26, 2024, but in conference rooms and with computer models within task forces assigned to niche parts of its construction.
Overseeing all of it is James Harkness, the chief engineer of the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA), who has been thrust into the largest project in the department's history.
Before construction crews can get to work on the new span and its roadways, officials must expedite a design process that roughly 150 engineers will work on during any given week, the Baltimore Banner reported March 26, 2025.
The engineers' local headquarters is an office building in an Anne Arundel County business park.
Designing and building a structure requires a series of problem-solving exercises. Engineers get in a room to discuss options, advantages, disadvantages over and over again. With an expansive team — specialists are based in at least seven states, as well as Europe, the MDTA said — each person brings a specific level of bridge-building experience to the table.
"That's the part I enjoy, seeing that come together," said Harkness in a recent interview with the Banner.
MDTA Engineer Oversees Key Bridge Rebuild
In March 2024, a 100,000-ton cargo ship, the Dali, lost power and plowed into a crucial support pier of the Key Bridge. The span's swift collapse killed six construction workers and blocked the shipping channel to the Port of Baltimore for months.
But even as massive chunks of bridge debris remained in the water, rebuilding efforts began.
Typically, constructing a new bridge of this scale would require years of preparation. For instance, from contemplation to completion, building a new Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River took 16 years, while a potential replacement for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge has been studied for years and is likely still at least a decade away from being finished.
The Key Bridge is expected to be completed in 4½ years, or by the fall of 2028. Its estimated price tag — which, at up to $1.9 billion, is three times that of the smaller Nice Bridge — will be federally funded.
The speedy and massive undertaking is costlier than anything the MDTA has previously built and is the largest project of Harkness' career.
The son of an architect, Harkness grew up in Philadelphia, Pa., had an early interest in math and physics and studied civil engineering at Penn State University. He later worked in the private sector in Baltimore before becoming the city's traffic engineer, where he has been tasked with analyzing and improving Baltimore's network of roads.
"I gravitated toward that public side just because I really liked the idea of how transportation projects benefit so many people," he said.
The city manages some smaller bridges and, once Harkness joined the state transportation authority in 2014, he assisted with major projects, including the construction of the Nice Bridge.
But few engineers have worked on an emergency response — and accelerated construction — like what is needed for the Key Bridge.
And within minutes of the Dali container vessel striking the Key Bridge, Harkness was notified.
His regular commute from his Carroll County home to the MDTA's engineering offices in Dundalk regularly took him over the Key Bridge.
Many times, too, it provided him with a memorable morning vista.
"About this time of year, the 7 a.m. sunrise over [the] Tradepoint Atlantic area used to be one of my favorite views," he said.
Outline for Bridge Construction Was Quickly Formed
Port Authority officials plan for emergency scenarios with tabletop exercises, but the magnitude of the bridge strike was not something they had prepared for, he said.
The search-and-rescue efforts and the lengthy process to collect bridge pieces from the Patapsco River began immediately. There were also risk assessments to be made, such as ensuring that the remaining structures were not at peril of falling.
In a matter of weeks, though, the MDTA also had to produce a budget and preliminary timeline for the replacement structure, according to the Baltimore Banner.
Never did authority officials consider the possibility of not rebuilding the span, they said, a pledge that was also made by then-President Joe Biden, Gov. Wes Moore and other elected officials.
As the owner, the MDTA is ultimately responsible for the bridge rebuilding effort and, ultimately, it contracted with a team of several companies, led by the national construction giant Kiewit, to take on the project. Some of those engineers work remotely and visit Maryland occasionally, but others were required to relocate to Baltimore.
As predicted by experts, the authority opted for a cable-stayed bridge, a type of span that has grown in popularity over the past three decades due to its affordability and how quickly it can be constructed. Towering pylons will be built with cables fixed to them; those cables, in turn, support the roadway.
The structure's main span — which determines how far the bridge's two piers are from shipping traffic — will be more than 3,300 ft. in length, making it one of the longest in the United States when completed.
Engineers Find Rebuilding Bridge to Be ‘Privilege'
There is an "honor and privilege" for engineers in building a bridge of this size, said Habib Tabatabai, a structural engineer at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee who has studied cable-stayed spans.
"It is not a trivial project at all by any means," he told the Banner. "It is a significant structure."
Preconstruction activities, such as soil analysis, began earlier this year, and information gleaned through that process will inform Harkness and the small army of engineers as they continue designing the new structure. For example, designers still have not finalized the type of pier protection the new bridge will utilize.
Meanwhile, Harkness is the chief engineer for the entire MDTA — not solely the Key Bridge — so he has other responsibilities. About two-thirds of his day-to-day work, however, is focused on the bridge rebuild, he said.
And much of it revolves around computer models.
"Engineers love models. We have models for everything," he explained. "If we can model it, we're going to try and [do so]."
Primarily, that calls for computer programs, but it also requires some physical structures such as a several-foot-long prototype of a bridge segment that has been tested in a Canadian wind tunnel.
That is just one tiny component of the rebuild, though. To make their goals manageable, engineers have been assigned to a variety of task forces, each focused on a single segment of the project.
"It's like the old joke, ‘How do you eat an elephant?'" Harkness said. "‘One bite at a time.'"
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