Your Chief Virtual Learning Architect

Learning to Performance

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Custom Design & Delivery

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Predictive Evaluation

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Enterprise Learning Strategy

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Dave Basarab Consulting has elevated the training experience, offering an end-to-end comprehensive approach that includes training strategy, instructional design, development, delivery , post program training transfer, and evaluation (via the unique Predictive Evaluation methodology). Virtual Chief Architect Dave Basarab has combined all of these individual training elements with his user-friendly, comprehensive Learning to Performance approach, which significantly increases companies' training ROI.

Why we are different

Innovation: Our primary focus is creating learning programs using a Learning to Performance approach.
Expertise: Dave offers the depth and breadth of his experience, including working internally at prestigious companies (Motorola, Ingersoll Rand and Pitney Bowes) as well as his knowledge and expertise as a highly-respected, sought-after consultant.
Partnership: Basarab collaborates with companies, serving as their own Chief Learning Officer whenever they need to plan, strategize, or implement training initiatives.

Training Services

Enterprise Learning Strategy

Enterprise Learning Strategy

At Dave Basarab Consulting, we're experts in creating Enterprise Learning Plans. We work with you to develop your company's learning strategy and direction.

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom training is an effective way of developing the capability required to execute your strategy. We are a custom design house that creates programs specific to your business.

Learning Burst Development

Learning Burst Development

We can create and deliver your courses via our unique Learning Burst Method - keeping your employees at their jobs while receiving world-class training.

Predictive Evaluation

Predictive Evaluation

We predict the ROI for your courses and establish success gates. We then evaluate the course against the success gates to show value realized and continually improve results.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development

Turn-key virtual custom leadership development program that combines world-class leadership speakers/educators with post-event personalized coaching to provide you with a cadre of highly skilled leaders.

Predictive Evaluation

Designing Custom Simulations for High-Stakes Decision Making

When a wrong call can affect safety, productivity, compliance or public trust, standard e-learning rarely provides enough practice. Custom simulations place people inside realistic situations where they must interpret incomplete information, weigh competing priorities and act under pressure. The result is a safer way to rehearse judgement before the decision carries a real operational cost.

For Australian organisations, that realism needs to reflect local conditions. A supervisor in the Pilbara may balance fatigue, extreme heat and production targets, while a hospital team in Melbourne may coordinate across professional boundaries during a fast-moving incident. A simulation should sound like the workplace, use familiar systems and reflect how decisions are actually made—not how a policy document describes them.

Define the Decision Environment

The design process starts with the decisions that matter most. Rather than asking what content employees should remember, identify the moments when they must choose, escalate, negotiate or intervene. Speak with frontline staff, leaders, risk specialists and subject matter experts to uncover the cues that shape those choices.

A useful scenario includes ambiguity, consequences and competing demands. It might involve a near miss at a mine site, a cyber incident affecting a government service or a bushfire-related supply disruption in regional New South Wales. Before development begins, document:

The decision-maker and their level of authority
The information available at each stage
The risks attached to delay or poor judgement
The stakeholders affected by the decision
The observable behaviour that signals sound judgement

This analysis prevents the simulation from becoming an expensive quiz. It also creates a clear basis for assessing capability and business relevance.

Turn Expertise Into Branching Scenarios

Subject matter experts often describe the ideal response after the fact. Designers need to uncover the realistic path: what people notice first, which assumptions mislead them and where experienced operators use judgement that is difficult to write down. Structured interviews, critical incident reviews and observation can expose these invisible patterns.

A strong scenario branches because of meaningful choices, not because every click opens a different screen. One decision may preserve a production schedule but increase safety exposure; another may slow work while protecting people and evidence. The contribution of an experienced practitioner such as Terry Barber’s perspective can help convert tacit expertise into believable consequences and useful coaching.

Dialogue should also sound natural in the Australian workplace. Terms such as “give it a crack”, “stop work” or “have a yarn” may be appropriate in context, but authenticity should never become caricature. The language must support psychological safety while allowing the simulation to challenge poor decisions.

Match Fidelity To The Risk

High fidelity does not always mean expensive video, virtual reality or complex software. The right level of detail depends on the decision being practised. A branching conversation may be ideal for stakeholder negotiation, while a timed incident room may be better for emergency coordination.

Simulation approach	Best suited to	Strength	Watch-out
Branching dialogue	Leadership and customer decisions	Reveals judgement and communication	Can feel artificial without credible consequences
Interactive case file	Compliance, investigation and risk	Supports evidence-based reasoning	Requires carefully curated information
Live facilitated exercise	Crisis, operations and team coordination	Builds shared decision habits	Quality depends on facilitator skill
Digital operational simulation	Complex systems and safety	Allows repeated practice at scale	Higher build and maintenance costs

The design should preserve the pressure that matters without adding distractions. Time limits, incomplete data, conflicting messages and changing conditions can be powerful, but each element needs a learning purpose. A participant should understand why the situation changed and what their response revealed.

For distributed Australian workforces, consider access from regional offices, remote sites and mobile devices. A simulation that works well in a Sydney workshop but fails with limited connectivity at a Queensland field location will not produce consistent capability.

Measure Behaviour And Business Impact

Assessment should focus on the quality of the decision process, not just the final answer. Did the participant seek the right information? Did they identify a serious hazard, involve the right person and communicate clearly? Scoring rubrics can capture these behaviours while feedback explains the trade-offs behind each branch.

Predictive Evaluation helps connect simulation results with adoption, impact and return on investment. Using the impact evaluation methodology, a learning team can define expected behaviour changes before launch and establish how those changes will be observed in operational data.

Useful measures may include escalation quality, permit compliance, incident reporting, rework, customer resolution time or the speed of restoring service. Not every result will be attributable to training alone, so evaluation should record contextual factors such as supervisor support, process changes and technology constraints.

Build Commitment Around The Experience

Senior stakeholders need to see how the simulation supports organisational priorities, while participants need to see its relevance to the job. Early alignment reduces late changes and helps establish a shared view of what success means. A practical stakeholder alignment approach can connect the investment to workforce capability, risk reduction and measurable business outcomes.

Governance is especially important when scenarios involve safety, regulated work or sensitive customer information. Agree who approves the facts, who owns updates and how performance data will be handled. Include worker representatives where appropriate, particularly when the simulation could expose gaps in systems rather than individual skill.

A delivery plan should make the experience repeatable:

Pilot with a small group from different roles and locations
Test accessibility, device performance and network conditions
Brief facilitators on questioning rather than rescuing
Schedule refresher scenarios as procedures and risks change
Review outcomes with operational leaders, not just the learning team

Custom simulations work best when they become part of the operating rhythm: induction, licence renewal, leadership development, emergency exercises or post-incident learning. The practical takeaway is simple: design around the decisions people must make, then measure whether the practice changes what happens at work.

Learning to Performance

Learning to Performance, a complete training approach, gives companies world-class training to drive significant return. This approach includes upfront work (Impact Mapping, design), training (for staff and company executives), and post-training efforts to ensure training transfer. This unique recipe - the key for successful training and adoption - is changing the way companies implement training. This methodology could work with any content for organizations in any industry.