01
Name the impact mechanism you are protecting against
Back-of-hand injuries arrive four ways: struck-by contacts from swinging or dropped objects, pinches between a moving and a fixed object, glancing blows from the worker's own tools, and repetitive vibration. Each pushes the specification differently — struck-by favors maximum guard coverage, tool work favors segmented guards with feel, and vibration is a different property altogether.
Pull the last two years of hand-injury and near-miss records before writing the RFQ. If injuries cluster at fingertips and thumb, knuckle-only protection misses the point. The mechanism, named plainly, is the single line that most improves the quote you get back.
Put in the RFQ: the dominant impact mechanism per role, taken from your own incident records.
02
Decide the coverage zones
TPR configurations range from a knuckle bar alone, through knuckle plus finger segments, to full back-of-hand coverage including the thumb. More coverage costs more, weighs more and bends less — so the answer is the zones your risk actually reaches, not the most armored glove in the catalogue.
Pinch-dominated work — rigging, tubulars, containers — earns finger and thumb segments, because pinches land at the grip line, not the knuckles. Tool-dominated work often does better with lighter knuckle coverage that keeps the hand closing naturally around the tool.
Put in the RFQ: the guard zones per role — knuckle, fingers, thumb, full back of hand — and where you accept none.
03
Specify the standard, the level and the evidence
ANSI/ISEA 138 grades back-of-hand impact attenuation at levels 1–3; EN 388:2016 marks an impact pass with a P in the final position. Naming the standard is the easy half. The half that protects you commercially is stating the evidence you require: a product-specific test report, the issuing lab, its date, and the marking on the glove you will actually receive.
Ask every supplier — True Port Global included — for that evidence for the exact model quoted. Where evidence does not exist for a product, agree before ordering whether testing is part of the deal or the requirement can be met another way. An unverifiable claim is a bigger risk than an honest gap.
Put in the RFQ: standard and level per role, the documents required with the shipment, and the destination market.
04
Specify the glove under the guards
TPR protects the back of the hand; everything else about the glove is decided by the palm side. Synthetic-leather palms dominate the category for their abrasion resistance and consistent sizing, with grip prints or reinforcement patches where oil and wet handling demand it. A glove with excellent guards and the wrong palm fails at its actual job — holding on.
Treat the base glove as its own mini-specification: palm material and reinforcement, grip surface, cuff style and closure, breathability for Gulf summer sites, and any cut requirement in the same glove. If your work also needs cut protection, say so explicitly — it changes the liner, not the guards.
Put in the RFQ: palm material and grip surface, cuff and closure, plus any cut or oil-grip requirement in the same glove.
05
Protect dexterity, or the gloves come off
The commonest failure of impact-glove programs is not guard performance — it is workers removing stiff gloves to finish a fiddly task, at exactly the moment protection matters. Segmented guards, pre-curved fingers and a genuine size run from M to XL keep the glove on the hand.
Trial the shortlisted model on the fiddliest routine task the role performs — fitting a shackle pin, starting a nut — not the easiest. State the size mix as percentages from issue records rather than 'assorted'; heavy-industry crews typically skew L and XL, but your records beat the rule of thumb.
Put in the order: the size run with mix percentages, and a sample trial on the role's finest-motor task before commitment.
06
Treat vibration as its own risk, not an impact feature
Impact ratings say nothing about vibration. If the role runs breakers, drills, grinders or impact wrenches, the specification needs padded palms — gel or equivalent — engineered for damping, alongside whatever TPR the struck-by risk justifies. Conflating the two buys a glove that half-solves both problems.
Be honest about what a glove can do here: anti-vibration gloves reduce transmitted vibration and fatigue, but tool selection, maintenance and exposure time do the heavy lifting on HAVS prevention. Specify the damping construction you want and keep the engineering controls in place.
Put in the RFQ: which roles need anti-vibration construction in addition to — or instead of — impact guards.
07
Apply site rules: color, coding and branding
Impact gloves run black with guard colors from orange and yellow through hi-vis schemes — colors sites use for visibility around moving plant and for coding by role, area or issue month. If your safety system uses color, it belongs in the specification, not in a follow-up email after the quote.
The same goes for branding: if the gloves ship under your own label, say at RFQ stage that you need private-label packing and whether artwork is ready. At True Port Global, orders start at 100 units, and packing specs are confirmed per order.
Put in the RFQ: color and coding scheme, branding needs with artwork status, and the packing spec you expect.
08
Do the commercial mechanics like any other glove order
Cost the category per month of service, not per pair — a guard that delaminates in a fortnight is dear at any price. Ask how the TPR is attached, what failure the supplier sees first, and what the warranty position is. Then run the ordinary discipline: paid samples before commitment, an Incoterm with a named place, and a quote that restates your spec line by line.
The eight-point RFQ mechanics — samples, delivery terms, quote evaluation, and the copy-ready RFQ skeleton — are covered in the welding-glove RFQ checklist and apply unchanged to impact-glove orders.
Put in the RFQ: sample terms, Incoterm and named place, target pair life, and a line-by-line spec restatement requirement.
