OCRS tracking for hauliers and goods operators. See the score move before DVSA’s report does.

An artic gets waved into a check site, the driver rings in from the lay-by, and by the time the paperwork reaches the office everyone has moved on to the next load. That encounter is already in DVSA’s numbers. DVSA’s OCRS guidance is blunt about what follows: the higher your score, the more likely your vehicles are to be inspected. HGVault keeps the reckoning in between DVSA’s reports, so a change in band is never a surprise.

How DVSA works out the score

OCRS sits with your operator licence. There are three figures: roadworthiness, traffic and a combined one. Roadworthiness events come from annual tests, roadside encounters, fleet assessments at your premises and desk-based checks. Traffic events come from roadside inspections and prosecutions, fleet assessments and desk checks. A roadside check that finds nothing is a clear event, and a clear event brings the score down.

The base score is your points divided by your encounters over a rolling three years, taken in one-year blocks. The latest year counts in full, the year before at 0.75 and the oldest at 0.5. Anything older drops out. That last rule catches hauliers who had a good run of clean checks three years ago, because as those age out the score can climb with nothing new having gone wrong.

For roadworthiness, 10 points or below is green, 10.01 to 25 is amber and anything over 25 is red. For traffic, green runs to 5, amber from 5.01 to 30 and red above 30. The combined score has the same bands as roadworthiness. Roadworthiness points depend on the defect category, and an S mark doubles them:

DVSA rescores every day, early in the morning. It sets the points, weightings and bands, and can change them.

A roadside encounter, entered once

From the PG35EC the office records the checks that were made, any notices on the lorry and on each trailer, every defect with its inspection manual reference and OCRS category, offences by band, and the advisories. Advisories carry no points. A chafed air line written up as an advisory in March can still be a prohibition in May if nobody gets the trailer into the workshop, so they are kept and put in front of the workshop.

A defect a driver should have spotted is traced back through the walkarounds on that lorry or trailer, and every check that marked the item OK is recorded against whoever did it. An encounter that ended in a PG9 is recorded as a prohibition with its own investigation, and its defects go on the defects list and onto a workshop job. An encounter the examiner sifted out, which DVSA does not score, is kept on file with no points.

The running score

From the encounters you enter, annual test results and DVSA’s encounter reports, HGVault keeps its own reckoning using DVSA’s published points and weightings. It shows today’s figure next to the one on DVSA’s last report and says what moved it: a new encounter, a test result, or an old event dropping out of the three years.

It can only count what goes in. Miss an encounter and the reckoning misses it as well. DVSA’s report is the official score, and the running figure is there so that a change in it never catches you cold.

The reports you save from DVSA’s Operator Reports are listed with their period, who saved each and when, and how often each kind was pulled over the past year. A read-only login can see that list. It is a small, useful piece of evidence that somebody in the office keeps an eye on the score.

Forecast and what if

Every event has a date, so HGVault knows when each one drops to 0.75, then to 0.5, then out, and draws the score forward from there. The what if answers the question that follows a bad week on the road: how many clean checks to get back under the line? Each clear encounter adds one to the number your points are divided by and adds no points, so the score falls. The what if runs that from your real position today, weightings applied, and shows the dates when old defects lose weight on their own.

Where it meets the self-check

Prohibitions and S marks are part of what an examiner weighs in a maintenance investigation, and the maintenance investigation self-check pulls them in from the same records. OCRS is the roadside’s view of your fleet, and the self-check lays those same events beside your inspection sheets and walkarounds.