Fire Permits Victoria

Helping emergency services move from paper to digital fire permit applications

Problem statement

Fire Permits Victoria is a State Government platform that unifies fire permit applications across three Victorian emergency services — CFA, FFMV, and FRV. Before this project, the process was entirely paper-based, fragmented across organisations, and inaccessible on digital devices.

My challenge was twofold: the user need wasn't well understood, and the stakeholders — spread across three independent fire services — needed to be aligned on a shared vision before any design work could begin.

The brief was to design an end-to-end digital permits platform that would allow Victorian citizens and fire service Operations Managers to check, apply for, and manage fire permits from any device, anywhere.

Design process

Discovery:
I started by analysing the existing paper-based forms to understand what the process required — and where it was failing users.

I then conducted interviews with permit applicants ranging from small businesses to large commercial operators, which surfaced a much wider range of user needs than the project had initially assumed.

I ran service design and product strategy workshops with stakeholders across all three fire services to build shared understanding, align on scope, and establish the future-state vision. From there I moved into information architecture, user flows, sketching, and wireframing.

Design system:
One of the most significant contributions of this project was establishing Hydrant UI — CFA's first design system. I built it to serve the project immediately while also laying the groundwork for future digital products.

A core part of this phase was close collaboration with developers to translate design system components into React components, and embedding a DevOps-aligned workflow into the team's practice from day one.

Sprint delivery:
Working in sprints, I designed all UI and visual design across the platform, then planned and ran usability testing to validate the experience before release.

Operationalise:
In the final phase, I supported user acceptance testing and handover to each operational team — ensuring administrators understood and confidently use all functionality of the platform.

Results

Fire Permits Victoria launched as a single, mobile-friendly destination for citizens across Victoria to apply for fire permits — replacing a fragmented, paper-based system that spanned multiple forms and three separate organisations.

• Unified the system — one platform serving permits previously issued separately by CFA, FFMV, and FRV
• Surfaced 70 years of legislative gaps — modern digital processes exposed ambiguities and outdated requirements in fire permit legislation that hadn't been revisited since the paper era
• Reduced administrative burden — consolidating multiple paper forms into a single digital flow introduced meaningful efficiencies for both applicants and Operations Managers
• Improved community visibility — fire service Operations Managers gained better transparency over where permitted burning was occurring across Victoria

Learnings

Working inside a large, multi-stakeholder business taught me a few things I'll carry forward:

• Get in the room early. Late engagement due to competing project priorities created downstream pressure. A designer at the table from day one changes the quality of decisions made before design "officially" begins.
• Being the sole designer is both a constraint and a gift. Full ownership meant I could move with consistency and clarity — but it required strict prioritisation to stay ahead of the development team.
• Staying in front of development is a discipline. In a sprint-based program, design debt accumulates fast. I learned to protect design lead time as non-negotiable.
• Remote collaboration is a solvable problem. When COVID moved the team to fully remote working, Miro became the project's shared brain — workshops, flows, and reviews all shifted online without losing momentum.
• Handover is a design problem. The quality of developer collaboration is directly tied to the quality of design artefacts and the relationships built along the way. This project sharpened how I think about both.
• Design education can't pause the project. In teams new to working with a designer, you're often teaching and delivering simultaneously. Building trust through small wins early creates the space for bigger design decisions later.
• Consistency isn't a nice-to-have. Usability testing confirmed what I suspected — UI inconsistencies were the primary source of user errors and confusion. It reinforced how much users rely on familiar patterns.