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A Wrightstown-based school that’s been training tradespeople since 1982 is expanding to Branchburg, bringing hands-on HVAC, electrical, welding, and plumbing training to Central Jersey – along with a program aimed at getting high schoolers job-ready before graduation.
If you’ve been anywhere near a construction site, apartment complex, or office building lately, you already know: finding a licensed HVAC tech, electrician, or plumber isn’t easy right now. There are more than a million skilled trade jobs sitting unfilled across the country, and New Jersey is feeling it.
One family-run school has been working on that problem since Ronald Reagan was president — and now it’s coming to Somerset County.
The Training Center, based out of Wrightstown in Burlington County, recently signed a 10-year lease on a 25,000-square-foot industrial building at 3087 Route 22 in Branchburg. It’s their second location, and it’s built to be something different.
More Lab Than Classroom — By Design
Of the facility’s 25,000 square feet, roughly 18,000 will be dedicated lab space. Not lecture halls. Not rows of desks. Working labs built to feel like actual job sites, where students can move between plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and welding setups in the same building.
Program Director Dan Moscatiello — whose late father John founded the school in 1982 as a practical training ground for boiler operators — has been direct about the vision.
“I want to redefine what a trade school should look like,” he told NJBIZ earlier this year.
The layout is intentional. A plumbing student working through a module on septic system wiring, for instance, can walk over to the electrical section and use those boards to see how the systems connect. The goal is to produce graduates who understand how trades intersect, not just how to pass one certification test.
The facility is targeting a summer or fall 2026 opening.
For those that are still considering trade career options, their are websites like Blue Collar Brain that offer great insight into different opportunities.
The School Behind the Expansion
The Training Center has been training New Jersey workers in HVAC, electrical, welding, plumbing, refrigeration, and boiler operations for over 40 years. It’s accredited, state-approved, and — according to the school — consistently turns out graduates who go straight into the workforce.
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data the school cites, the average trade worker in New Jersey earns around $127,000 a year, with top earners clearing $150,000. Moscatiello describes plumbing, in particular, as “a sleeper career.” The demand is real, and the pay reflects it.
What sets The Training Center apart from larger trade schools, according to Moscatiello, is that it’s never optimized for volume. “While other trade schools have turned into big profit centers,” he’s said, the school measures success by whether students can actually perform on a job site.
Getting High Schoolers In the Door Early
The Branchburg expansion also sets the stage for a program the school has been quietly building out: TradeReady.
Currently piloting at Willingboro High School and Capital City High School in Trenton, TradeReady is a 32-week, 96-hour course for high school juniors and seniors. Students travel to The Training Center’s Wrightstown campus twice a week for 90-minute sessions, working through eight core modules covering thermodynamics, electrical systems, plumbing basics, HVAC, boiler operations, troubleshooting, soft skills, and career pathways.
The current pilot runs 17 students at a 10-to-1 student-teacher ratio. Instructors include master plumbers, licensed master HVAC contractors, and a master electrical contractor — people with, as Moscatiello puts it, “hundreds of years of combined experience.”
Students who complete the program walk away with a graduation certificate, a documented skills record, and a direct pathway into higher-value apprenticeships — bypassing the usual entry-level grind.
“The Training Center has been a great opportunity for my students, giving them real-world skills and access to strong career pathways,” said Jessica Massenat, a STEM Teacher Leader at Capital City High School in Trenton. “This program is an avenue to help them build a positive path out of the city and into stable, successful careers.”
The school says it’s now in active talks with several Somerset County school districts about bringing TradeReady to the area for the 2026-27 school year.
Why This Matters for Central Jersey
Somerset County has no shortage of employers who need licensed tradespeople — from pharma campuses and corporate parks to the residential construction that keeps pushing west across the state. Having a serious, accredited training facility on Route 22 puts that pipeline closer to where the jobs are.
The Training Center expects to serve between 800 and 1,500 students through its career development programs by 2027. And Moscatiello isn’t thinking small long-term — he’s said he hopes to eventually scale the model to metro areas like Chicago and Washington, D.C.
But for now, the focus is Somerset County.
“Success in the short term is launching in Branchburg,” he said, “with the scale-up of these programs where we’re impacting the space.”
For more information on The Training Center and its programs, visit thetrainingcenter.com.
