Hand Safety First® was built from field experience — not from a training room. Over 25 years of industrial supply, application engineering, and direct customer engagement across India, the Middle East, and the USA shaped the frameworks, tools, and publications that sit behind this initiative.
Satish Agrawal has led Project Sales Corp (PSC) as CEO since April 2000, building it from an industrial consumables business into a specialist group operating across safety-critical hand tools, oilfield supplies, marine and industrial equipment, and technical MRO products.
As Managing Director of PSC Hand Safety India Private Limited, he oversees the development and commercialisation of the Hand Safety First® product and publication ecosystem — a body of work built specifically around engineering the hand out of hazardous positions in industrial tasks.
As Managing Partner of PSC Houston Oilfield Supplies LLC, he has maintained active engagement with oil and gas operations in the United States, extending the group's application knowledge into offshore and upstream environments.
The HSF initiative emerged from a specific observation made across many years of industrial supply engagement: safety programmes in most heavy industry environments were comprehensive at the system level, but imprecise at the point of hand contact.
Hazard categories were identified. PPE was specified. Training was delivered. Yet hand injuries continued — not because workers ignored instructions, but because the exact moment of exposure, the last few inches of a task, was never mapped with the same rigour as the broader hazard environment.
HSF was founded to address that gap. The initiative introduced a framework that asks a specific field question: where does the hand enter, and what would it take to remove the reason for that entry? The answer, in most cases, begins not with a glove but with a tool, a method, or a task redesign.
"In most hand injury events, the hazard was known. What was missing was the precise question about the hand's position in the last few seconds of the task — the moment everything actually happens."
Satish Agrawal · Managing Director, PSC Hand Safety India Private LimitedThe HSF Exposure Control Framework™ was not derived from published safety literature alone. It was built through direct application engagement with safety and operations teams across industries where hand exposure to mechanical hazards is a daily operational reality.
Casthouse and smelting environments with molten metal, heavy slab handling, and overhead crane operations.
Hot rolling, continuous casting, material handling, refractory maintenance, and shutdown environments.
Rig floor operations, tubular handling, load landing on vessel decks, and pressurised connection make-up.
Sling handling, rigging operations, container and bulk cargo environments, heavy lift positioning.
Casting retrieval, shear table operation, grinding, and tooling environments with high struck-by and caught-between exposure.
Precision assembly, heavy component alignment, and maintenance in rotating equipment environments.
High-risk task windows where equipment isolation, tooling, and hand positioning all converge under time pressure.
Across these environments, the application of hand-safety tools — magnetic load handlers, push-pull tools, sling retrieval aids, load guiders, and anti-tangle taglines — was developed, field-tested, and documented through direct customer engagement. The HSF framework reflects that accumulated application knowledge.
The publications produced under the Hand Safety First® initiative are intended for use by safety managers, supervisors, and engineers — not as theoretical documents, but as working references grounded in industrial application.
A two-volume, 1,000-term reference covering hand safety terminology, exposure concepts, control methods, and equipment categories across heavy industrial environments. Published in A4 and A5 editions.
A doctrine-first reference structured around the HSF Exposure Control Classification system. Each entry covers the exposure mechanism, control hierarchy, representative tools, and field application. Covering 54 entries across nine control domains.
Structured safe operating procedures covering specific high-exposure tasks — sling handling, load guiding, tagline operation, mechanical equipment use. Each SOP includes exposure classification, severity matrix, toolbox talk content, and illustration sets.
The foundational proprietary frameworks behind HSF: the Hand Exposure Equation™, the Exposure Elimination Ladder™, the Last 300 mm Rule™, the Architecture of Distance™, and the Exposure-to-Injury Path™ — each developed from field observation rather than theoretical modelling.
Interactive structured audit tools for oil and gas, aluminium manufacturing, and integrated steel plant environments — each with sector-specific question sets using control-led framing across 10–13 operational sections.
Many safety programmes identify hazard categories correctly and provide adequate PPE guidance. HSF operates at a finer resolution — it maps the exact entry point, the specific task moment, and the operational reason that causes hand exposure. The controls that follow from that mapping are proportional, specific, and field-implementable.
The HSF frameworks were developed through direct engagement with industrial operations teams — not derived from safety research literature alone. The tools, methods, and controls described in HSF publications reflect actual field application across heavy industry.
HSF begins with task redesign and distance tools — not with glove selection. PPE appears at the end of the control hierarchy, after elimination, substitution, and engineering options have been applied. This reflects both the recognised hierarchy of controls and the physical reality of hand injury mechanics.
Where does the hand enter? At what moment? What is the operational reason? These questions are not answered by hazard category identification or generic risk assessment. HSF is structured specifically to answer them for each task and each environment.
HSF publications, SOPs, and audit tools are structured for use in the field — not for boardroom presentations. The language, format, and content are calibrated for the people who are responsible for controlling hand exposure at task level, not for compliance documentation alone.
Hand Safety First® is a brand and publication initiative of PSC Hand Safety India Private Limited. It is not a regulatory body, certification authority, or standards organisation. No HSF publication, framework, or tool constitutes a legal compliance substitute for applicable OSHA, BIS, or local regulatory requirements.
The frameworks, publications, and SOPs developed under Hand Safety First® are based on the accumulated industrial application experience of PSC and its teams. They represent a practical, field-tested approach to hand exposure control — not a regulatory standard.
Customer references are not named on this website. All industry references are generic. No certification claims are made. No safety outcomes are guaranteed. Employers remain responsible for conducting their own hazard identification, risk assessment, and compliance with applicable regulations.
Where HSF frameworks align with recognised safety principles — including the hierarchy of controls, engineering-first thinking, and administrative control disciplines — that alignment is presented accurately and without overstating the authority or regulatory standing of HSF materials.
Twenty-five years of industrial supply, application engineering, and direct safety engagement across steel, aluminium, oil and gas, marine, and heavy engineering environments — that is the foundation behind Hand Safety First®.
Not a theoretical framework. A practical one. Built from the question that most safety systems do not ask with sufficient precision: where does the hand enter, and how do we remove the reason for entry?