Snapshot
About The Client
Total Fire Service is a Queensland-based fire safety company providing maintenance, compliance, documentation and workplace fire safety services across a broad range of industries. With decades of industry experience, the business is known for its practical, down-to-earth approach to fire safety education and compliance.
Their strong personality-led brand and hands-on training style set them apart in an industry where compliance training is often seen as dry and forgettable. The project aimed to extend this distinctive approach into a scalable online learning experience.
The Need
Total Fire Service had a growing need to convert their highly regarded face-to-face First Responder and Evacuation Training into an online learning experience without losing the energy, humour and memorable delivery style that made the training effective.
The challenge was to create compliance training that felt engaging and human, rather than overly corporate or text-heavy. The target audience included Australian workers across a range of industries and literacy levels, meaning the learning needed to be practical, accessible and easy to recall in high-pressure situations. The client also wanted a solution that would reduce trainer time while maintaining learning effectiveness and preserving the personality-driven approach of founder Dave Brien
The Learning Solution
We partnered closely with Total Fire Service to design a scenario-based eLearning course focused on helping learners confidently decide whether to extinguish or evacuate during a workplace fire emergency.
The course was designed in Articulate Rise and structured where learners were presented with a realistic workplace fire scenario and explored two options: extinguish or evacuate. This created a more immersive and decision-driven learning experience compared to traditional compliance modules.
A key part of the strategy was preserving Dave’s authentic communication style. Through video-led storytelling, humour, metaphors, mnemonics and conversational language, the course intentionally challenged the stereotype of “boring compliance training”. The mnemonic HERO was developed to support evacuation recall, while PASS reinforced extinguisher use.
We also developed:
- A refreshed visual identity and branding kit aligned to the existing website aesthetic
- A custom course storyboard and scripted video concepts
- Interactive learning elements including flip cards, branching pathways and recall activities
- Responsive mobile-friendly eLearning built for any device
- A final knowledge check with unlimited attempts and feedback to reinforce retention
The visual design drew heavily from the client’s existing digital presence, using bold black backgrounds, yellow accents, clean typography and realistic Australian fire imagery to maintain consistency between the website and learning environment. The resulting experience felt modern, memorable and unmistakably “Total Fire Service”.
The Outcome
The result was a highly engaging and scalable online fire safety training experience that maintained the personality and practical nature of Total Fire Service’s face-to-face delivery model. By combining humour, storytelling and interactive decision-making with clear compliance outcomes, the course transformed mandatory fire safety training into a memorable learning experience.
The project also provided Total Fire Service with a strong digital foundation for future online offerings, including branded assets, reusable learning structures and video-led delivery approaches that aligned closely with their business identity and existing website presence.
