The International Society of Automation (ISA) recently had an opportunity to interview Kevin Klein, one of four individuals to be elevated to the distinguished grade of ISA Fellow in 2024. The esteemed Fellow member grade is one of ISA’s highest honors, recognizing only those Senior Members who have made exceptional contributions to the automation profession, in practice or in academia.

What does becoming an ISA Fellow mean to you?

Klein: The field of instrumentation and automation is quite broad and there are a lot of very talented people. To be recognized by my peers for the contributions I have made to the industry I hope would encourage others to participate and get involved in the development of instrumentation and automation technology, whether it is through product innovations, writing and sharing experiences or working on standards development. This is also important as a user of the technology and the standards, since the focus is mostly on developing others in the field and how best to use the innovations from the suppliers.

What contribution to the automation industry got you nominated?

Klein: My contributions to the instrumentation and automation field are mainly training and development of people within the companies I worked for, developing corporate standards, developing and rolling out policies and procedures related to process safety and safety instrumented systems and work on ISA and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards. As a member of ISA, I provided papers at the ISA shows and was recognized with an award for “Excellence in Documentation” for the paper “Grandfathering, it’s not just about being old.” This was a great experience and growth opportunity I would encourage everyone to do. I was also involved in the Texas A&M Instrumentation symposium providing papers, workshops and served on the steering and advisory committees.

When I first started my career, I depended a lot on the knowledge and support of the experts inside and outside of the companies I worked in. As I gained experience, I took an active role in educating and training up the next generation of instrument and automation engineers. This included developing and rolling out an Arc flash program, a layers of protection program, process safety management policy and program and instrumentation training classes. As a subject-matter expert, I mentored many people in my companies to provide greater understanding of instrumentation and safety systems.

Much of my career has been spent developing and communicating standards inside and outside my companies. Early on, I got involved with the ISA84 committee in the development of the TR84.00.04 technical report and participated as a voting member on the committee. Since then, I have been co-chair of the TR84.00.08 – Guidance for Application of Wireless Sensor Technology for Non-SIS Independent Protection Layers and contributed to TR84.00.02 – Safety Integrity Level (SIL) Verification of Safety Instrumented Systems and many other technical reports. Currently, I am co-chair for ISA-84.91.03 – Functional Safety: Process Safety Controls, Alarms and Interlocks for Low Integrity Protection Layers, which is progressing to be a new standard. In IEC, I am part of the US TAG for the MT61511 committee and provided review and content on the edition 2 and edition 3 development. I was also part of the development of several books by the Center for Chemical Process Safety, including Guidelines for Initiating Events and Independent Protection Layers, Safe Automation of Chemical Processes and Guidelines for Safe and Reliable Instrumented Protective Systems.

How has being an ISA member and now Fellow positively impacted your career?

Klein: I have been part of ISA most of my career. Early on, the main impact was the ISA yearly shows and the technical presentations provided by those shows. It was an easy way to visit a lot of manufacturers of instrumentation and automation as well as see experts in the field provide papers. The ISA publications on instrumentation and automation were great sources of information and understanding on instrumentation and applications. Finally, the development of standards within the ISA organization and opportunity to network with the experts in these fields provided great opportunities to learn instrumentation and automation. The standards committees provided an opportunity to discuss various issues and topics with a wide range of experts and allowed me to be able to bring a greater knowledge of the topics back to my company and make me a better subject-matter expert.

This interview has been lightly edited to conform to ISA editorial style.

Nominate Someone to Become an ISA Fellow

ISA members are invited to nominate peers and colleagues to become ISA Fellows. Nominations for 2025 close on 1 August 2024. Learn more about the rigorous selection process.