ABOUT
Our Mission Statement
We here at the T.L.B. and Excavator Certification Centre are committed to you the student, to bring to all a professional, comprehensive, detailed and safe program. All Ministry-mandated aspects of the program will be extensively covered which will enable you to move forward on the correct path toward a career in the heavy equipment construction field.
My Promise to you, the Student
Here at the TLB and Excavator Certification Centre, each student will be given an equal opportunity to excel in our program. Knowledgeable and informed instructors, modern equipment and the use of real-life machine simulators. The past success rate of my programs exceeds 90%. If you want to take advantage of all of this and 50 years of experience from your instructor, come join us.
Robb Farthing
About Robb Farthing
I started working construction while still in high school in 1974. It was with a small four man excavating crew. I was able to get on the tractor loader backhoe a few times with the bosses permission. He showed me the basics of starting and moving the machine around. It seemed natural and very logical to be using it. I am self-taught. There was no formal training back then, just "how-to" advice from an experienced boss. I had to figure out the actual front and rear controls on my own by watching others, good or bad.
A year later at the age of seventeen, I purchased my own backhoe and became self-employed. I became better and better in a hurry by digging holes and trenches every chance I could including weekends on my own time. Practice practice and more practice until I became smooth on the controls, as well as obtaining valuable knowledge about how to complete each job.
Those years were filled with working on hundreds and hundreds of residential type projects. Whatever people or builders required, I completed. Large and small. Including digging graves at the local cemetery, where I eventually buried both my parents in their final resting place.
In 1999, while working in the construction field, I took a college "consulting" course. Shortly after that course, Durham College asked me to write and instruct a "heavy equipment civil course" and instruct forty-two students in British Columbia. The union that I worked with (c.l.a.c.) needed members trained and certified on heavy equipment to have workers in place to build the 2010 Olympics. I was grandfathered in with a federal license to train and in 2003 I put on the course. That was the start of my training career. I also mentored apprentices for the union here in Ontario until my retirement.
I have worked my machines for Somerville Pipeline for twenty-five years as a subcontractor, for both electrical and gas sectors, the revitalization of St. Clair Avenue and Queens Quay in Toronto. I have also for many years, worked the "water main rehab contracts" locally. I have also been lucky enough to work on the railroad from British Columbia to Montreal bringing a "fibre optic" mainline across Canada to expand the cellular network. I chose to retire from the field in 2016. Forty years in the field as a machine operator. All because of my professional operating skills and my obsession about the tractor loader backhoe and becoming the very best that I could possibly be toward my career.
I was getting quite a reputation for being punctual, fair and honest. After impressing a local cottage owner with rebuilding his shoreline, he recommended me for a project at Ontario Hrdro as a contractor rehabbing transformer stations. That eventually grew to me building a distribution station for hydro all over Ontario. My payroll grew to over fifteen workers. At the same time. I purchased a second, and third machine and worked those machines for 3 years with Guild Electric installing the lighting system between the east and westbound lanes from Oshawa to Toronto.
