Mining operations contain many serious hazards. This guide addresses only one specific category of them.

Mining sites involve blasting, dust, noise, electrical systems, ground movement, heat, vehicle proximity and dozens of other hazard categories. This guide does not address any of them.

What this guide does address is a specific and recurring pattern: the moment when a worker's hand becomes the primary interface between a person and a load, component, tool or struck surface — because no engineered alternative exists or has been provided.

Before any product is considered, before any solution is proposed, the correct starting point is observation. Walk the task. Watch the worker. Find the hand.

In most mining maintenance, handling and rigging tasks, the hand is present for a reason. It is providing a function. It is pushing, steadying, guiding, holding, retrieving, aligning or positioning something. That function is real and necessary. The question is not whether the hand should be doing something — it is whether the hand is the only available way to do it.

Many hand exposures during suspended-load work arise because the worker's hand was the only available tool for the task at that moment. There was no engineered interface to provide the guidance or control function. The hand filled the gap.

This pattern recurs across suspended-load rigging, heavy-component reinstallation, strike work, pipe handling and many other tasks throughout a mine site. Many hand exposures in mining arise not simply from behaviour, but because the worker's hand is performing a necessary task function for which no practical engineered interface has been provided.

This distinction matters for how we approach every application in this guide. We are not asking workers to be more careful — we are asking what tool should have been provided so that careful was no longer the only protection available.

Every hand exposure addressed in this guide can be classified by the function the hand is performing when it enters the hazard zone. There are eight. Understanding the function is the first step toward finding an engineered alternative. Note that positioning is treated as a task outcome — achieved through one or more of these functions — rather than a separate function in its own right.

A suspended load is a load in motion. Even a load that appears stationary is subject to swing, rotation, drift and sudden movement from crane correction, line stretch or environmental forces. On active mine sites, workers approach suspended loads regularly — during crane lifts in workshops, truck bays, fixed-plant maintenance and shutdown activities.

They do not approach out of recklessness. They approach because the load needs to be steadied, oriented, guided to a precise position, or slowed as it travels toward its landing point. In the absence of any tool that can perform that function from a safe distance, the hand is the only available option.

The remaining pages in this section examine each of these three interaction types and identify where PSC/HSF tools can provide a credible stand-off alternative. The goal in every case is the same: preserve the function the hand was providing while moving the hand away from the load.

You do not need rigging theory to understand why suspended loads are dangerous to approach. You need to understand four movement types — and what triggers them in a mining environment.

Each of these movement types creates a scenario where a worker who has approached the load to stabilise, guide or align it is suddenly exposed to a mass moving toward their hands with significant force.

A heavy suspended component does not need to be moving quickly to create a severe crush exposure. Where a hand is trapped between the moving load and a fixed surface, even relatively small uncontrolled movement can have serious consequences.

Stand-off tools — push/pull poles, taglines, remote engagement tools — allow the worker to apply corrective force from a position that is not between the load and a fixed object. That is the entire purpose of the tools described in the pages that follow.

A familiar lifting scenario across many mine sites: a worker standing alongside or beneath a suspended load, both hands on it, guiding it toward a landing point. The load may be a fabricated steel component, a heavy machine assembly, a pump, a gearbox or a section of pipe. The worker is doing exactly what they have been trained to do — control the load.

The problem is not the intention. The problem is the position.

The push/pull tool is the primary PSC/HSF intervention for suspended-load guidance. It replaces the worker's hands on the load with a rigid or semi-rigid pole that allows the same guiding and stabilising functions to be performed from a stand-off position.

Where a push/pull pole provides direct contact-free control close to the load, a tagline provides remote orientation from a greater distance. In mining lifts — particularly long crane travels, outdoor lifts and large component movements — the tagline allows workers to maintain rotational and directional control while remaining well clear of the load's path.

These tools are not interchangeable. Page 14 maps the selection criteria in detail.

A load has been landed. The lift is complete. The rigging crew begins to release the load and prepare for the next task. At this point, a specific and easily overlooked exposure occurs: the tagline must be retrieved.

When a tagline becomes draped over or around a recently landed load, or when the line is pinned under the load at landing, the worker who was standing at a safe distance during the lift now walks toward the load — and often toward the crane's travel path — to free and retrieve the line.

Push/pull tools guide loads by applying directional force to the load's surface. Taglines control orientation by line tension. LoadGrab® addresses a different task: remote engagement at a specific point on a load or structure — a handle, a lift point, a control surface — without requiring the worker to reach into the hazard zone to make that engagement.

The four suspended-load tool families in the PSC/HSF range address different tasks. The decision between them depends on the type of control required, not simply which tool is available.

● Primary application  ·  ◐ Secondary / partial application  ·  – Not this tool's role

Every heavy-component movement in a mine site follows a sequence. Understanding that sequence is the first step to identifying where the hand-exposure moments occur — and which of them can be addressed with an engineered intervention.

Highlighted stages = primary hand-exposure moments during loading, unloading and component positioning

Mine sites receive and dispatch large, heavy components continuously — replacement parts for mobile equipment, fabricated structures, pump and motor assemblies, skids, steel sections and service units. Each arrival or despatch creates a truck or trailer loading/unloading sequence. It is one of the most consistent hand-exposure environments on a mine site.

The final metres of a load's travel before landing can be a particularly critical hand-exposure phase. The load is slowing. The crane operator is making fine corrections. Workers are at their closest to the load. And the space between the load and the receiving surface is narrowing.

This is the approach phase: the load is above its landing point, descending, and still subject to lateral drift, rotation and pendulum movement from any disturbance. It is the phase where workers most commonly place their hands on the load — and where hand exposure can become particularly concentrated.

In most approach-phase scenarios, a push/pull stand-off tool can provide the required directional correction. The tool's rigid contact with the load allows the worker to feel and correct load movement without placing any part of their body in the path of the descending component.

The moment a suspended load contacts its receiving surface — a trailer bed, a foundation, a rack, a workshop floor — is a critical crush-risk moment. The gap that the worker's hand was occupying to guide the load closes to zero. If the hand is still in that space, the energy of the descending load concentrates onto it.

This is the thought — a familiar instinct in precision positioning work — that places a worker's hand in the particularly hazardous position in the task. The load is almost there. A centimetre of adjustment is all that's needed. The instinct is to use the most precise instrument available: the hand.

The Last 300 mm Rule™ is HSF doctrine identifying the final approach and positioning phase as a particularly critical hand-exposure zone. As a load approaches its landing or mating position, the need for precision increases and workers may be drawn closer to the load to guide, align or position it.

The correct stand-off tool for a positioning task depends on the load's geometry, the control required and the available access. Not every load suits every tool. The table below maps common mine-site load types to the appropriate PSC/HSF intervention.

● Primary fit  ·  ◐ Conditional / geometry-dependent  ·  – Not applicable

A mining maintenance workshop is unlike a general industrial workshop in one important respect: the components being maintained are very large, very heavy, and very frequently replaced. Each maintenance cycle involves component removal, handling, repair or replacement, and reinstallation — tasks that repeat across the maintenance schedule and accumulate hand-exposure opportunities over time.

Component removal in a mining workshop follows a consistent pattern: the component is freed from its fasteners, a crane or hoist takes the weight, and then — as the component begins to separate from its mount — a worker reaches in to steady it, guide its path, and receive it as it clears the structure.

That final phase — separating a heavy component from its mount while managing its swing, tilt and travel path — is where the hand exposure concentrates.

Reinstallation is the reverse of removal — but it is more hazardous. During removal, the component moves away from its mount. During reinstallation, it moves toward a fixed structure, and the worker must guide it into alignment with bores, flanges or keyways while the crane holds the load above the mating surface.

The alignment requirement — which does not exist during removal — is what brings the hand into a particularly hazardous position: between the descending component and the fixed structure it is approaching.

Mining workshop maintenance regularly involves drift-pin driving, punch work and chisel operations. Bucket teeth, track pins, bearing housings, wear parts and fabrication work all create strike tasks. These tasks typically involve one worker holding the struck tool while another delivers the hammer blow.

The holder's hand is in the strike zone. Each hammer blow creates the opportunity for a miss. On large mining components, the hammers are heavy and the strike energy is substantial — and strike tasks can recur frequently across a maintenance shift.

Not all workshop hand exposure involves suspended loads or strike work. Some components create hand exposure because their geometry makes them difficult to grip, balance or manoeuvre — regardless of weight. A component that is bulky, unbalanced, smooth-surfaced or awkwardly shaped forces the worker's hands into positions that are exposed to drop, pinch or crush risk during handling.

Pipe sections, hydraulic cylinders, cylinder bodies, shaft sections and similar tubular components are common in mining workshop maintenance. They share a geometry that creates a specific handling hazard: round, smooth surfaces that roll, slip or swing unpredictably when lifted, moved or set down.

A single mining maintenance workshop contains multiple distinct hand-exposure zones. This map summarises the zones, their primary exposure types, and the PSC/HSF tool families that may apply.

A 300-tonne haul truck contains hundreds of maintenance points. Its components are large, heavy and expensive. Access is often awkward — below decks, inside wheel arches, beneath undercarriages, around engine bays. The combination of component scale, difficult access and repetitive maintenance cycles creates a hand-exposure environment that is more demanding than a general workshop.

The heaviest recurring component-handling tasks in mobile equipment maintenance involve wheel assemblies, ground-engaging tools (GET), bucket components and undercarriage parts. For the larger assemblies considered here, mechanical lifting assistance would normally be involved. The exposure is not the weight itself; it is what the worker does with their hands while the crane or hoist holds the component.

The pin and impact work described in Part IV (workshop scale) is replicated in mobile equipment maintenance — at larger scale, in more difficult access positions, and with heavier hammers and larger pins.

Track pins, bucket pins and GET attachment pins are among the heaviest struck-tool applications in the mining industry. Large mining equipment pins — track pins, bucket pins and GET attachment pins — are substantially larger and heavier than typical workshop struck tools. Driving them requires multiple workers and substantial hammer energy. The holder's position — hand near the face of the pin as blows are delivered — carries significant injury risk.

Fixed process plant — crushers, screens, feeders, conveyors, cyclones, thickeners, pumping systems — contains hundreds of hazard categories. Energy isolation, nip points, rotating parts, falling material, structural collapse, chemical exposure: these are the dominant fixed-plant safety concerns.

This guide addresses none of them. PSC/HSF is not a fixed-plant safety system. It is a set of hand-exposure elimination tools for specific manual handling and positioning tasks.

Within fixed-plant maintenance, there is a subset of tasks that share the characteristics of the tasks addressed throughout this guide: a worker's hand becomes the primary interface between a person and a component during a manual handling or positioning activity.

Fixed-plant maintenance involves the routine removal and reinstallation of heavy steel guards, access covers, grating panels and wear liners. These are typically flat or near-flat ferrous steel components — sometimes weighing 50–200 kg — that must be lifted, moved and positioned during each maintenance cycle.

The conventional handling method is a hand grip on the panel edge — fingers curled under a steel plate, or palm on a flat surface with no positive attachment. The panel can slip, tilt or rotate, concentrating the drop/crush risk at the worker's grip points.

Fixed-plant maintenance regularly involves crane-assisted reinstallation of components — crusher mantles, screen decks, pump casings, bearing housings and similar. The alignment and seating requirements for these components are often precise. The exposure pattern is identical to the workshop reinstallation tasks described in Part IV: the hand guides the component into its mating surface.

This page exists because credibility requires it. A guide that claims to have an intervention for every mining hand exposure is a product brochure, not a technical reference. There are exposures throughout fixed-plant and mining maintenance where the PSC/HSF range does not have a suitable answer.

Magnetic handling tools replace a friction hand-grip with a positive magnetic interface on suitable ferrous surfaces. They are applicable to a specific and well-defined set of mining tasks — and inappropriate for a similarly specific set of tasks where ferrous material, surface condition, geometry or temperature make magnetic contact unreliable or unsafe.

Gas cylinders are present throughout mine sites — in workshops, surface facilities, maintenance areas, laboratories and stores. The geometry of a gas cylinder creates a specific handling hazard: a smooth, round, heavy vessel with no natural hand grip, that rolls unpredictably if laid on its side and can tip without warning if standing.

The conventional method of moving a cylinder — tilting it onto its bottom edge and rolling it — places the worker's hands on the cylinder body, directly in the roll path, and creates repeated tipping and roll-away risk.

This page is not about ergonomics or manual handling weight limits. It is about the specific hand-exposure moment that occurs when a worker lifts a component that lacks a natural hand hold — or where the available grip points place the hand in a compromised position during the lift.

The most common error in hand-safety intervention is selecting a product before fully understanding the task. A tool is selected because it seems similar to the task, or because it was used elsewhere on site, or because it was the first one shown in a catalogue. The result is frequently a product that does not match the actual function the hand was performing — and a "trial" that fails not because the engineering principle is wrong, but because the wrong tool was chosen.

This decision tree guides you toward a tool family for an application review. It does not make a final selection — that requires confirming load geometry, weight, access and site conditions.

Before a PSC/HSF tool is trialled in any mining application, these twelve parameters should be confirmed. They determine whether the selected tool is appropriate for the specific task — and what conditions or limitations apply.

A tool that matches an application on paper must still be validated in the field. The conditions of an actual mine site — access geometry, load characteristics, operator familiarity, environmental factors, task pace — always differ from a generic description. The controlled trial bridges that gap.

Documentation converts a single successful trial into a repeatable site standard. Without documentation, the knowledge that a particular tool works in a particular task lives only in the memory of the workers who were present. With documentation, it becomes an instruction.

A single mine site contains the full range of applications described in this guide — and often many within the same working shift. Rigging in the crane bay, pin work in the workshop, load positioning on the truck bay, conveyor component handling in the fixed plant, cylinder movement in the store. Each is a separate exposure. Each requires its own application review.

This reference maps each tool family to its principal control function and typical mining application. Application review is required before any tool is selected or trialled on site.