Change, Edition and Review Policy

Foreword. This Standard governs when and how VRS documents change: the change instruments and their limits, review cadences, edition-transition models, the propagation of change to outstanding ratings, and the stability contract — the published list of what can never change. The governing rule is that editions are additive: points are added at the top, existing point meanings are frozen forever, and no instrument re-scales or re-weights the system (§8). The designation footprint of change is specified in VRS-GEN-002 Clause 8. Implements CEO decisions D5, D6 and D9 (2026-09-02) as recast for the VRS 2026 model. Requirements use “shall”; recommendations use “should”.

Introduction

A moving standard earns trust only when its movement is governed, pre-announced, and justified. The mechanisms here combine the proven practices of Euro NCAP (pre-announced roadmaps, fixed review cycles), ISO (forced confirm/revise/withdraw), PCI (transition machinery), S&P (criteria-change propagation to outstanding ratings), and the EU Energy Label lesson (build the growth mechanism in before it is needed). The VRS applies that lesson as an additive ceiling rather than a periodic rescale: the scale grows upward, and the meaning of every point already awarded stays fixed.

1 Scope

This Standard defines: change instruments and their limits (Clause 4); review cadences (Clause 5); edition-transition models (Clause 6); propagation to outstanding ratings and the refresh model (Clause 7); the stability contract (Clause 8); and the per-edition deliverables (Clause 9). It excludes designation mechanics (VRS-GEN-002), the derivation of priors (VRS-GEN-202) and the rating-validity lifecycle (VRS-GEN-008, Application of Ratings).

2 Normative references

• VRS-GEN-002, Designation, Drafting and Style Rules (undated) — designation footprints; criterion layout; priors marked (prior) (§7.5.8).
• VRS-GEN-005, Intrinsic Rating (undated) — the IR criterion tables and cold-start parity (§6).
• VRS-GEN-202, Calibration (undated) — derivation of priors; calibration produces edition changes to priors, never live adjustments.
• VRS-GEN-009, Registry (undated) — the record of every rating, its tier, edition, and refresh events.
• VRS-GEN-008, Application of Ratings (undated) — rating validity and review states.

3 Terms and definitions

Per VRS-GEN-001 (including tier, edition stamp, rung, evidence bar and prior). Locally: roadmap — the published forward notice of planned edition changes; global floor — the oldest edition still serviced (6.4); major change — a change to a robot model that would be expected to alter the awarded result of any IR or AR criterion. A major change is defined by outcome, not by a version number (CEO principle, 2026-09-15).

4 Change instruments

4.1 The permitted change instruments are, in ascending severity: editorial correction · corrigendum · amendment · revision · additive scale expansion · criterion retirement. Designation footprints per VRS-GEN-002 §8.2.

4.2 An instrument shall never exceed its tier. In particular: a corrigendum shall correct errors only; an amendment shall not change the point meaning of any rung; and a revision shall roll up all outstanding amendments and corrigenda.

4.3 No more than three amendments shall accumulate against an edition before a consolidating revision (VRS-GEN-002 §8.4).

4.4 Additive scale expansion (the IR headroom mechanism — D5, CEO 2026-09-02). The IR ceiling is designed to rise across editions as the industry matures (PRD §9, expandable ceiling). An expansion shall: (a) appear on the roadmap at least one edition in advance; (b) state its justification; © never re-interpret existing edition-stamped scores — an IR 92 (VRS 2027) remains exactly that; (d) be accompanied by re-rating availability so rated parties can pursue the new headroom. Expansion is additive only: it adds criteria or points at the top and freezes the meaning of every point already defined. NOTE — This is the deliberate incentive engine: new headroom devalues old scores relative to the frontier, motivating manufacturers to re-rate; their payoff is improved insurance and financing terms for their customers.

4.5 Priors change only by edition. A (prior) — a numeric threshold inside a rung marked (prior) per VRS-GEN-002 §7.5.8 — shall change only by amendment or revision at an edition boundary, with its derivation recorded in the calibration record (VRS-GEN-202). Calibration produces edition changes to priors; it shall not adjust a live rating between editions. Changing a prior re-thresholds where a rung is reached; it never changes the points a rung awards.

4.6 No rescale, no re-weight. The VRS has no rescale instrument. The meaning of the IR number and of the AR letters is immutable (Clause 8), and importance is set by point range, not by multipliers or weights (PRD §2.2) — so there is nothing to re-weight. Point meanings are frozen forever (PRD §9).

5 Review cadence

5.1 The scoring documents — VRS-GEN-005, VRS-GEN-006, the GEN-10x IR criterion tables, and each sector’s -201 protocol — and the sector standards (VRS-<CODE>-001) shall follow an annual edition cycle (D6, CEO 2026-09-02).

5.2 Each annual edition shall be preceded by a published roadmap describing planned changes and their justification (loss data, new hazard, new technology). Un-announced or unjustified bar-raising is prohibited.

5.3 Governance core documents (VRS-GEN-001, -002, -003, -004, -007, -010, -011) are exempt from the annual cycle and shall undergo systematic review at least every five years.

5.4 Protocols and data twins are reviewed continuously and versioned per change; a -201 protocol and its -501 data twin change together, the twin regenerated, never hand-edited.

5.5 Every review shall conclude in exactly one dated outcome: confirm (retention without change, recorded in the change history), revise/amend, or withdraw.

6 Edition transitions

6.1 The available transition models are: version coexistence (old and new editions both serviceable; every rating edition-stamped); overlap-retirement (both assessable for a fixed window, then the old edition retired; individual requirements may be future-dated); and cyclic supersession (new editions apply to new ratings only; old ratings stand, edition-stamped, subject to VRS-GEN-008 validity).

6.2 The default for sector standards and assessment protocols is version coexistence (the insurance-policy-year reality). The transition model for each change shall be declared in its Summary of Changes.

6.3 Edition stamp mandatory. Every rating shall carry its edition and tier on its face: an IR as IR <n> (VRS 20xx) and an AR as <Sector> AR: <letter> (VRS 20xx) — <Tier>, with the AR tier no higher than the IR tier. Because the scale is additive and absolute, IR numbers are comparable across editions; the edition stamp records which criterion table produced the number.

6.4 Future-dated requirements shall state their effective date on the requirement itself; until that date they are recommendations.

6.5 Global floor. VRS shall publish, as a governed parameter, the oldest edition under which ratings are still issued or maintained. Editions older than the floor are serviced for record purposes only. The floor exists to prevent edition arbitrage (parties shopping for a weaker edition).

7 Propagation, refresh and withdrawal

7.1 No expiry. A rating does not lapse; its issue date, edition and tier are shown, and it remains valid until refreshed or withdrawn (PRD §10).

7.2 Outcome-based propagation. When an amendment, revision, or scale expansion would alter the awarded result of any IR or AR criterion for an outstanding rating, that rating is a major change case: it shall be placed in the Under-Edition-Review state (VRS-GEN-008) and re-reviewed within a declared window. Unaffected criteria carry forward unchanged. Version numbers alone shall not trigger review; only outcome does. Corrigenda and editorial corrections do not trigger review.

7.3 Refresh routes.

• Re-Verification — an updated pack assessed against the current edition, at a reduced fee.
• Re-Certification — where there is no major hardware or software change, an updated pack is assessed against the current edition without new witness testing; the prior Session Record (Certified tier) carries forward. Affected Certified criteria have only their demonstration steps re-run. The old rating stays published against its old edition and revision.

7.4 Downgrade and withdrawal triggers. A rating shall be downgraded or withdrawn on: a materially false attestation; retraction of evidence the rating depended on; or an unremediated major safety incident. Withdrawals are recorded publicly with their reason (VRS-GEN-009).

7.5 Field-record annotation. The model’s public field record (incidents, recalls) is displayed alongside the rating and updated independently of the score.

8 The stability contract

8.1 Immutable (change constitutes a new system, not a new edition):

• published designators (VRS-GEN-002 §5.1.3);
• IR is a single number, higher = better, always edition-stamped;
• the AR letter scale C < B < A < AA < AAA (AAA best) and its meaning;
• the meaning (semantics) of the IR number;
• the three tiers Unverified < Verified < Certified and the rule AR tier ≤ IR tier;
• the 12 application sectors and their family codes (VRS-GEN-007);
• the three applicability states (VRS-GEN-006 §5);
• the document skeleton (VRS-GEN-002 §6) and the two-rating architecture (one IR + per-sector ARs; no standalone manufacturer or asset rating);
• no rescale and no re-weight, ever: point meanings are frozen forever and importance is set by point range, not by multipliers.

8.2 Versionable via Clause 4 instruments: rung wording, (prior) thresholds, evidence bars, tier requirements, sector rubrics, application classes, test/assessment protocols, and validity windows — all additive to, and consistent with, the immutable contract.

8.3 Additive-expansion tier: the IR ceiling (4.4) only.

9 Per-edition deliverables

Every revision or amendment shall be published with: (a) a Summary of Changes document listing each change and the criteria it affects; (b) the regenerated machine-readable data twin where one exists (never hand-edited); © its transition-model declaration (6.2); (d) for scoring documents, the calibration derivation for every changed (prior) (VRS-GEN-202); and (e) the updated roadmap naming the next edition’s planned additions.

10 Worked example (illustrative — no real rating exists)

Consider Model M, an industrial mobile robot carrying IR 88 (VRS 2027) at the Verified tier and Industrial AR: A (VRS 2027) — Verified (AR tier ≤ IR tier, 6.3). The sequence walks one edition lifecycle through the change instruments (Clause 4) and shows what happens to the outstanding rating (Clause 7). Every date is recorded to day precision; every state is a registry event (VRS-GEN-009), not a value edited in a document.

1. Editorial correction. A cross-reference typo in a scoring clause is fixed by editorial correction (4.1). It alters no technical meaning, so 7.2 does not apply: IR 88 (VRS 2027) is untouched and no review is triggered.
2. Amendment re-thresholding a prior. The 2028 edition amendment moves one IR criterion’s (prior) threshold, its derivation recorded in VRS-GEN-202 (4.5). It appeared on the 2027 roadmap with its loss-data justification (5.2); its Summary of Changes declares the transition model version coexistence (6.2). Because the recalibrated prior would alter the awarded result of that criterion, Model M is a major change case (7.2): on the effective date 2028-04-01 its rating enters Under-Edition-Review, is re-reviewed inside the declared window, and is reaffirmed as IR 87 (VRS 2028). The one-point move is arithmetic, not a rescale: the rung that previously awarded, say, 6 points now awards 5 for Model M because the prior at which the 6-point rung is reached moved; the meaning of the 6-point rung is unchanged (PRD §9). The earlier stamp IR 88 (VRS 2027) still means exactly what it meant, and 88 and 87 are comparable across editions on the same absolute scale (6.3).
3. Additive scale expansion. The 2029 edition raises the IR ceiling by adding new criteria and points at the top (4.4), announced one edition ahead. Existing scores are not re-interpreted: IR 87 (VRS 2028) is preserved verbatim. The manufacturer may re-rate to pursue the new headroom (4.4d) — the deliberate incentive engine, whose payoff is improved insurance and financing terms for its customers.
4. Re-Certification without new testing. Model M later reaches Certified. A subsequent edition changes a criterion its Certified evidence does not touch; because that change is not a major change for the Certified criteria (7.3), the prior Session Record carries forward and only affected demonstration steps would be re-run. The rating refreshes to IR 89 (VRS 2030) — Certified with no witness re-test.
5. Global-floor retirement and field record. When the 2027 edition eventually falls below the published global floor (6.5), ratings issued under it are serviced for record purposes only and cannot be renewed against that edition, closing the edition-arbitrage path. The registry exposes the days remaining until each edition reaches the floor. Throughout, the model’s public field record (7.5) is displayed alongside the rating; a materially false attestation would trigger withdrawal (7.4), recorded publicly with its reason.

At no point is the meaning of a number or letter changed: the VRS has no rescale instrument (4.6, 8.1). No value was edited inside any document — category thresholds live in VRS-GEN-005 and its data twin, and every transition above is a dated, recorded registry event.

Bibliography

• ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1 (Consolidated ISO Supplement, 2024), Procedures for the technical work — systematic review of International Standards at 5-year intervals; recorded outcome confirm/revise/withdraw (anchor for §5.3, §5.5). https://www.iso.org/sites/directives/current/consolidated/
• Regulation (EU) 2017/1369 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2017 setting a framework for energy labelling and repealing Directive 2010/30/EU (OJ L 198, 28.7.2017) — the lesson of building the growth mechanism in before it is needed (anchor for the additive ceiling, §4.4). http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2017/1369/oj
• PCI Security Standards Council, PCI DSS v4.0 (published 31 March 2022; v3.2.1 retired 31 March 2024; 51 future-dated requirements effective 31 March 2025) — overlap-retirement + future-dated requirements (anchor for §6.1, §6.4). https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/
• Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 (2013), T. Preston-Werner — MAJOR/MINOR/PATCH conveys change severity (precedent for the §4.1–§4.2 severity-tiered instrument ladder). https://semver.org/
• Euro NCAP, Rating Review 2023 (approved by the Board of Directors, December 2023) — governed, published criteria change; same-edition-only comparison for a letter grade (§4.2, §6.3). https://www.euroncap.com/
• Euro NCAP, Vision 2030: a Safer Future for Mobility (published 9 November 2022) — pre-announced forward roadmap giving rated parties advance certainty of planned changes (§5.1–§5.2). https://www.euroncap.com/en/press-media/press-releases/euro-ncap-vision-2030-a-safer-future-for-mobility/
• IOSCO, Code of Conduct Fundamentals for Credit Rating Agencies, FR05/2015 (March 2015; first issued 2004) — review of ratings on new information (§7 propagation). https://www.iosco.org/library/pubdocs/pdf/IOSCOPD482.pdf
• Regulation (EC) No 1060/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 September 2009 on credit rating agencies (OJ L 302, 17.11.2009), consolidated — criteria-change disclosure (§7). http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2009/1060

Change history