Christophe Ruas has been elected the new president of the professional organization Les Canalisateurs.

His professional career

Christophe Ruas has been CEO of Société Régionale de Canalisation (SRC) since 1995 and of Leygue since 2002, a company based near Nîmes. He has also been the manager of Financière Travaux Publics et Carrière since 2008. He holds a Master's degree in Chemistry specializing in "Materials and Interfaces Chemistry" and a Specialized Higher Studies Diploma in Business Administration.

His national and regional union involvement

Passionate about water and network infrastructure, Christophe Ruas has long been involved in national and regional trade union activity.

At the regional level, he chairs the Gard delegation of the FRTP and has been treasurer of the FRTP Occitanie for 10 years. He also initiated the creation of the GECO Label (Granules de l'Économie Circulaire d'Occitanie) on behalf of the FRTP Occitanie, in coordination with ADEME and the Region.

At the national level, he led the FNTP's "Well-being at Work" working group, conducted in partnership with the Directorate General for Labour, the CNAM, the INRS and the OPPBTP. He has also chaired the Pipe Layers' Prevention Committee since 2021.

The top priorities of his mandate

His initial priorities stem from the six-month tour he undertook across France, covering 15 stages and bringing together 300 participants and nearly 140 member companies, to better understand their expectations and concerns and the realities of their local areas. Their primary expectation is for their trade association to be more visible and more actively involved in advocating for their collective interests with public decision-makers.

To be a true and trusted partner of local authorities, through a dedicated strategy

Behind every school, hospital, business, or home, there are functioning networks that enable daily life, guarantee economic activity, and ensure the continuity of essential services. Water and gas are now strategic issues, and climate change further reinforces this reality: regions must now anticipate these changes in order to adapt effectively.

In this context, interconnections between networks become essential tools for solidarity between territories to secure access to water and energy, and the professions of pipe layers are an integral part of the solution.

The territorial and regional delegates of the union, who will be elected on June 3, will have a central role in engaging with elected officials and promoting this ambition: to put the maintenance and modernization of water infrastructure back on the agenda of the territories.

To achieve this, the union, as a true trusted partner of local authorities, has built a strategy dedicated to elected officials which will be accompanied by concrete tools, such as MonSuiviEau, work such as the cost of inaction and training, in order to make visible the consequences of postponing investments.

A manifesto is being developed to help businesses support elected officials in their investments, provide them with arguments to convince their constituents of the necessity of these projects, and encourage greater acceptance of the work. Because postponing investments never saves money; it simply transfers costs and risks to future generations.

To raise the bar for the profession and help it maintain its high standards of quality

Through the work of its various Quality, Technical, Gas Distribution, Heating, and Transport committees, the trade association aims to grow the profession and strengthen its high-quality standards. Also noteworthy is the Trenchless Construction committee, which has been working for several months to develop this type of construction, which helps to improve public acceptance. Previously focused on rehabilitation, it is now expanding to include new construction and has led to the creation of two subcommittees: one dedicated to rehabilitation and the other to new construction.

Supporting companies to strengthen their social responsibility and ecological transition initiatives

Christophe Ruas will continue to chair the Prevention committee to closely monitor the work he has undertaken to improve the working conditions of pipe layers and to secure construction sites, because a profession that protects better is also a profession that attracts more people.

In this capacity, the Skills & Human Resources committee will intensify efforts to promote the attractiveness of the professions, which also involves the ability to train and integrate more women into companies and demonstrate that the public works sector is also a hub of innovation and technology. Projects focused on exoskeletons or assessment tools, far from being secondary issues, demonstrate that the profession invests as much in people as in infrastructure.

For its part, the Environment Commission will continue to support companies' ambition to reduce the carbon footprint of their construction sites, through the creation of their carbon footprint, in particular through the adoption of tools such as SEVE-TP.

For Christophe Ruas: “Our strength lies in our companies, our regions, and our collective. Our profession is at the heart of the major challenges of our time. Today, resource conservation, adaptation to climate change, and the modernization of our infrastructure have become shared priorities. Taking care of our networks also means preparing for the future and passing on more resilient regions to future generations. Faced with these challenges, the French Pipe Layers Association will continue to be present on the ground, listening to its members and working alongside local authorities. Because the solutions of tomorrow depend on the work we carry out today.”