from WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Thursday,

March 28th. We'll talk now about the Francis Scott Key Bridge tragedy in Baltimore,

but pull out the lens for a New York, New Jersey, and national

view. How did this actually happen? Was it a fluke or does it reveal some kind of national

systemic risk given today's ships and bridges? And we'll use the opportunity to just explain

how some of our maritime infrastructure works. We take this for granted, right? When we

drive or take trains over the many bridges in our lives, or when we buy products that arrive on

giant ships, or when we go on ships and boats ourselves. So with us now are Brian Buckman,

a structural engineer and CEO of Buckman Engineering, based in Brooklyn.

They do bridge and maritime engineering.

And Peter Ford, founder of Skyrock Advisors, they do port and maritime infrastructure management

and are based in the Charlotte, North Carolina area.

He's originally from New York, though, I understand, and went to school around here,

went to the United States Merchant Marine Academy for college.

Brian and Peter, thank you both for joining us.

Welcome to WNYC.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for the invitation.

Can I ask you each to start by just talking a little bit about your companies and the kinds of work they do?

You know, these are not the kinds of businesses, as you well know, that make it into the news very much until something goes wrong like happened in Baltimore.

So Brian Buckman, would you start?

What does Buckman engineering based in Brooklyn do? What kinds of projects or any other way you want to describe your company?

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