Recently members contacted HVIA with concerns around waiting times for Vehicle Type Approval (VTA) variation submissions exceeding 60 days lodged with ROVER, the Federal Department of Infrastructure’s online portal for applications and approvals under the Road Vehicle Standards (RVS) legislation.
In consulting with members more generally, it was found that the waiting time can vary from as little as five days to as long as more than 60 days. The latest Assessment Timeframes Report Issue 4, released in July 2025, states the median time for approval of variations is 31 days.
As this conflicted with some member experiences, HVIA Chief Technical Officer Adam Ritzinger and Chief Engineer Rachel Michaud met with representatives Amanda Milczarek and Umesh Shamdasani from the Department to discuss the topic in detail.
The Department has committed to investigate the VTA processing delays, but notes there can be periods where applications spike due to either changes in ADR or international requirements as well as changes to suppliers/manufacturers etc. In recent times, there has been some increase in both vehicle and component submission types due to the reduction of copper in brake lining mandated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Milczarek and Shamdasani also offered some general feedback around VTAs which may be of value to HVIA members.
For general information on submitting VTA’s, they suggest applicants ensure familiarity with the guide to varying approvals in ROVER available here.
To facilitate smoother processing of variations for VTAs, they add that it is critical to fill in the comments section ‘Confirming the condition(s) of the approval you are seeking to change or remove’. The processing team will use this information to chunk and streamline applications which may be of a similar nature, or to determine which applications are more straight forward to process. This allows the team to improve the overall processing time of all approvals. The field for ‘Comments and any other matters’ can also be used to identify the nature of the request. For example, ‘ADR 38/05 change only’.
Finally, Milczarek and Shamdasani point out that it’s important to be aware that once a variation is submitted, it cannot be amended or changed until approved. The applicant will need to decide whether to withdraw the variation entirely, and resubmit with changes, or to leave as is, wait for approval and then submit the amendment. Either option may lead to increased overall waiting time for an approval.
There is a process for requesting priority assessment of an application. This, and the typical assessment timeframes, can be found here.