ISA Standards Leader Wins Major IEC Award

• Standards

Summary

Nicholas P. Sands, an ISA Fellow and long-time leader within ISA’s Standards & Practices Department, has been awarded the IEC 1906 Award by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in recognition of his leadership and technical expertise as the lead editor of an IEC team in the development of IEC 62682, Management of Alarm Systems in the Process Industries. The standard is the IEC version of the ISA-18.2 standard of the same title. It was originally developed by the ISA18 standards committee, of which Sands serves as co-chair with Donald Dunn.

The award, which commemorates the founding of the IEC in 1906, honors technical experts around the world whose work is fundamental to the international standardization mission of the IEC. ISA is a major participant in and contributor to IEC standards, with original ISA standards serving as the basis of several widely used IEC standards.

Sands is currently a senior manufacturing technology fellow working for DuPont’s Tyvek® business and the global alarm management leader for DuPont, supporting plants in Virginia and Luxembourg. In his more than 30 years with DuPont, he has been a business process control leader, site process control leader, process control consultant, and plant control engineer in several different businesses. He has worked on or led the development of several corporate standards and best practices in the areas of automation competency, safety instrumented systems, alarm management, and process safety.

Sands is a past vice president of ISA’s Standards and Practices Department and, in addition to serving as co-chair of ISA18, is the managing director of ISA101, Human-Machine Interface, and ISA84, Instrumented Systems to Achieve Functional Safety in the Process Industries. He is also a past vice president of ISA’s Professional Development Department, and a volunteer in the development of ISA’s Certified Automation Professional program.

Sands has written over 40 articles and papers on alarm management, safety instrumented systems, and professional development, and is the co-editor of ISA’s Guide to the Automation Body of Knowledge, Third Edition. He is an ISA Certified Automation Professional and a licensed professional engineer in the state of Delaware. He has a BS in chemical engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

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