Guide · the HVA scheme · checked against the NHVR's documents on 2 October 2026

The Maintenance Assurance Program, and what it asks you to keep

When the Heavy Vehicle Accreditation scheme began replacing NHVAS, maintenance did not disappear and it did not stay where it was. It became an add on to General Safety Accreditation, written as outcomes instead of eight numbered standards. Here is where it sits, what it gives you, the records it asks for in the regulator's own words, and how it is audited.

The short version

The Maintenance Assurance Program is the maintenance half of the new scheme. You do not hold it on its own: you hold General Safety Accreditation with the Maintenance Assurance Program, which is how the NHVR's 2026 Operator Guideline writes it. It is the successor to the old NHVAS Maintenance Management module, and the change is more than a name. NHVAS gave you eight numbered standards and a quarterly compliance report. This gives you a set of outcomes and asks you to show, from your own records, that they are happening.

The HVA scheme replaces the National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme (NHVAS).
Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme Operator Guideline 2026, NHVR

Two things are worth knowing before the detail. It is voluntary, so nobody is obliged to be in it. And in two states it is worth money, because it takes the annual inspection out of your registration cycle.

It is voluntary, and the duty is not

The HVA scheme is a national voluntary accreditation framework designed to recognise heavy vehicle operators who demonstrate strong safety management capability.
Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme Operator Guideline 2026, NHVR

Voluntary is the word the guideline uses, and it matters for how you read everything below. Nobody can require you to be accredited. What you cannot opt out of is the primary duty under the Heavy Vehicle National Law, which applies to every party in the chain whether or not they hold accreditation, and which is satisfied with evidence rather than intentions. So the records on this page are worth keeping either way. Accreditation is the version where somebody comes and checks them.

Where maintenance sits now, and where it does not

This is the part the rest of the internet is getting wrong, so it is worth being plain. The guideline sets out four accreditation types. Maintenance is an add on to the general accreditation. It is not Alternative Compliance, which is where fatigue and mass sit. Pages that say otherwise have carried the old NHVAS module list across without checking it against the 2026 document.

General Safety Accreditation

The base accreditation. A safety management system, audited, covering the whole business rather than one module of it.

General Safety Accreditation with the Maintenance Assurance Program

The base accreditation plus maintenance. This is where maintenance lives under the new scheme, and it is what replaces the old NHVAS Maintenance Management module. In New South Wales and Queensland it carries an exemption from the annual inspection that forms part of registration.

Alternative Compliance Accreditation for fatigue

Fatigue, as an alternative way of complying with the standard hours. Nothing to do with maintenance.

Alternative Compliance Accreditation for mass

Mass, as an alternative way of complying with mass limits. Also nothing to do with maintenance.

What you get for it in New South Wales and Queensland

The guideline names two jurisdictions, New South Wales and Queensland, and says that in those eligible jurisdictions the accreditation with the Maintenance Assurance Program:

provides exemptions from the annual inspections that form part of the registration process.
Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme Operator Guideline 2026, NHVR

If you run in those two states, that is a measurable return: the inspection comes off the registration cycle because your own maintenance system is doing the work instead. It is also the clearest answer to why a business would take on the audit. The guideline names no other state or territory for this, so if you are elsewhere, the case for accreditation is assurance rather than an exemption.

The records it asks for, in the regulator's words

The evidence requirements sit in an appendix to the guideline, under the heading for the accreditation type itself. Each line below is the guideline's sentence, with what it means in practice underneath it.

Keep records showing that Daily Checks, fault reporting and maintenance work are being carried out as part of day-to-day operations.

The test is not whether you have a procedure. It is whether the records show the procedure happening on ordinary days.

Keep records in a systematic way that allows the maintenance history to be tracked for audits and reviews, with a focus on safety risks and vehicle condition results.

Systematic is doing work here. A folder of signed sheets is records. Being able to follow one trailer through a year of faults and repairs is a system.

Keep records for all vehicles that operate under the accreditation, including subcontractor vehicles.

Subcontractors are named explicitly. If somebody else's truck runs under your accreditation, its daily checks and repairs are your evidence.

You can show that a daily check is carried out for each vehicle in use.

For each vehicle in use, on the days it is in use. Not a sample, and not a policy saying it should happen.

The daily check must cover key safety-critical parts (e.g. brakes, couplings, and tyre pressure/integrity).

The guideline names three in its example. A check that ticks a box called Walk around without naming what was looked at is thin evidence.

Ensure vehicles entering the accreditation can clearly be shown to be roadworthy.

A machine joining your accredited assets needs a starting point on the record, not an assumption.

One more requirement belongs in this list and is not quoted here. The guideline asks you to keep records, and it names work orders or invoices as the example, clearly showing that faults and regulatory notices have been dealt with and fixed. That sentence as printed carries punctuation this site does not reproduce, so it is in our words rather than in quotation marks. The substance is the point: a fault closed out on paper, and a defect notice closed out the same way.

Daily checks with a name and a date, faults closed out, services with their intervals: that is the evidence, and it is what AssetPass is for. Start free and put one asset in.

Start free, no card Or send your asset list

How long to keep it, and the answer is not a number

Operators ask this first and the 2026 guideline does not answer it in years. What it asks for is a judgement, scaled to the business:

Keep records in a format and for a length of time that allow for audit and review, without creating more administrative tasks than needed for the risk profile of the business.
Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme Operator Guideline 2026, NHVR

We went looking for a stated period in that document and there is none. A planted sentence claiming a seven year minimum was correctly rejected on probing, which is as close as this instrument gets to proving an absence, and the seven year figure appears in none of the regulator documents these guides are built on. Under NHVAS there is a number, three years, and it comes from the Maintenance Management Accreditation Guide under the heading Documents you must keep, not from Maintenance Management Standard 5, which is where most pages put it. Our NHVAS and HVA records guide sets that citation out in full and explains why the usual one is wrong. Three years remains a sensible floor under either scheme.

The audit, and the four words it turns on

Your operation will be audited by a HVA scheme approved auditor.
Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme Operator Guideline 2026, NHVR

Approved auditors are those registered on the NHVR register of approved auditors.
Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme Operator Guideline 2026, NHVR

The phrase to know is the method, because it tells you what the auditor is actually testing. The guideline says auditors use the Present, Suitable, Operating and Effective method for all audits. Four questions about one system: is it there, does it suit a business this size and this complicated, is it running, and is it working. The first three can be answered with documents. The fourth cannot, and that is the one that separates a business with a tidy folder from a business with a maintenance system, because effective is measured against what your own records show happened.

A conforming audit is the condition of keeping the accreditation rather than a formality at the start of it, and the scheme expects a safety management system that suits the size and complexity of the operation rather than a standard one bought off a shelf. Those two statements are our reading of the guideline rather than quotations: each rests on a single pass of the document, and this page does not put a sentence in quotation marks unless it reproduced identically twice.

If you are accredited under NHVAS today

Then you are still on NHVAS, and the eight numbered Maintenance Management standards are still the ones your auditor works through. The NHVR's implementation FAQs say the existing scheme continues to operate during a transition period and that operators currently accredited will have up to three years to transition. Three years from what is not spelled out, and no published calendar date for the end of the transition could be found, so we are not quoting a deadline at you. Worth noting too: the Operator Guideline, which is the document the rest of this page quotes, says nothing at all about moving an existing accreditation across. It covers applying, not transitioning.

The date that governs you is your own accreditation expiry, which is on your certificate. What is worth doing now is the part that does not depend on a date: the records both schemes want are the same records, so a maintenance system that satisfies your NHVAS auditor is the one that satisfies a HVA scheme approved auditor, and the gap between them is retention and the quarterly report rather than anything in the yard.

What this looks like in AssetPass

Said plainly, and without claiming anything the product does not do today. A daily check in AssetPass is a prestart, filed by whoever did it, with the date and the name on it and any fault going straight onto the fault list rather than into somebody's memory. A fault is recorded as it was found, with who raised it, and it closes out on a jobcard with the lines, the rates and the GST on the printed card. A service schedule carries its interval and shows what is due and what is overdue, and where an asset's history is not known the app says not tracked instead of inventing one. Certificates and test results are kept against the asset. That is the systematic part of the guideline's sentence: one place where a machine's history can be followed, rather than a folder per year.

What it does not do is pretend. It will not estimate how many daily checks were missed, because it does not know which assets worked on which days, and it says so rather than printing a guess. For an auditor asking the fourth PSOE question, a count the business cannot stand behind is worse than no count.

Questions people ask

What is the Maintenance Assurance Program?

It is the maintenance half of the Heavy Vehicle Accreditation scheme, the scheme that replaces NHVAS. You hold it as an add on to General Safety Accreditation, and the NHVR's 2026 Operator Guideline writes it as General Safety Accreditation with the Maintenance Assurance Program. Where NHVAS set out eight numbered Maintenance Management standards, this is written as outcomes and evidence: show that daily checks, fault reporting and maintenance work are happening as part of normal operations, and keep the records in a way that lets somebody follow the history.

Is the Maintenance Assurance Program part of Alternative Compliance?

No, and this is the most common error in what is currently published about the scheme. The guideline sets out four accreditation types: General Safety Accreditation, General Safety Accreditation with the Maintenance Assurance Program, and Alternative Compliance Accreditation for fatigue and for mass. Maintenance sits with General Safety Accreditation. Alternative Compliance is where fatigue and mass sit. If a page tells you maintenance is Alternative Compliance, it has carried the old NHVAS module list across without checking.

What do I actually get for it?

In New South Wales and Queensland, the guideline says the program provides exemptions from the annual inspections that form part of the registration process. It does not offer that in the other states and territories, and it names only those two. Beyond the exemption, the stated value is assurance: a maintenance system somebody outside your business has audited and found to be working.

Is accreditation compulsory?

No. The guideline calls the HVA scheme a national voluntary accreditation framework. Nobody has to be accredited. The primary duty under the Heavy Vehicle National Law applies either way, and the records the program asks for are the plainest evidence that you are meeting it, accredited or not.

What records does the Maintenance Assurance Program ask for?

Records showing daily checks, fault reporting and maintenance work are being carried out as part of day to day operations. Records, work orders or invoices, showing faults and regulatory notices have been dealt with and fixed. Records kept in a systematic way that lets the maintenance history be tracked for audits and reviews. Records for every vehicle operating under the accreditation, subcontractor vehicles included. And a daily check you can show was carried out for each vehicle in use, covering the key safety critical parts.

How long do I have to keep the records?

The 2026 guideline sets no period in years. It asks for records kept in a format and for a length of time that allow for audit and review, without creating more administrative tasks than the risk profile of the business needs. That is a judgement, not a number. Under NHVAS the number is three years, from the Maintenance Management Accreditation Guide under the heading Documents you must keep, so three years remains a sensible floor and our NHVAS guide sets out that citation in full.

Who audits it, and what do they look at?

A HVA scheme approved auditor, registered on the NHVR register of approved auditors. The guideline says auditors use the Present, Suitable, Operating and Effective method for all audits, which is four questions about one system: is it there, does it suit this business, is it running, and is it working. The fourth is the one that catches a business with tidy folders and nothing happening in the yard, because effective is measured against what your own records show.

I hold NHVAS Maintenance Management today. What happens to it?

Nothing immediately. The NHVR's implementation FAQs say the existing NHVAS will continue to operate during a transition period and that operators currently accredited will have up to three years to transition to the new scheme. Three years from what is not spelled out and we could find no published calendar date, so we are not quoting a deadline. The Operator Guideline itself says nothing at all about moving an existing accreditation across. The date that governs you is your own accreditation expiry, which is on your certificate.

The rest of the guides

NHVAS and HVA maintenance records: what to keep The prestart checklist guide The heavy vehicle inspection checklist guide

Sources

Every quotation above was read off the first document on 2 October 2026 and reproduced identically from two independently worded probes, with an invented sentence planted in each probe to check that the reader rejects what is not in the document. It rejected all of them. The last two links are here for you rather than as citations: their contents could not be read through the tools available, so nothing on this page is quoted from them. If the NHVR changes any of this, the page is wrong until it is checked again, and the date at the top is how you catch that.

The program asks you to show it is happening, not that you meant it to. Send your asset list and we will set it up and hand it back loaded.

Start free, no card Or send your asset list

This is a guide, not legal advice. If your operation is accredited, your auditor and the NHVR's own guidance material are the final word.