Interview with Franck Le Nuellec: CCCA BTP's strategic innovation

Batinfo: What is your vision for the future of the CCCA-BTP and more broadly for the building and public works sector and training in this sector?

Franck Le Nuellec: Our vision of the future is multi-layered, meaning there is a short-term vision, namely 2030, and a slightly longer-term vision with a horizon of 2040. In the very short term, we have systems like Renoboost which allow us to have a territorialized prospective approach to skills needs in the field of renovation where we clearly see that training must be multi-channel, both immersive and real, concrete, and tactile.

It's clear that a purely digital approach hasn't yet found its place. Learning also, and perhaps even more so, happens through contact, collaboration, and the emotions it generates. Active participation is crucial for fostering learning.

This is what we see with the growing importance of facilitation skills. We often talk about soft skills. These soft skills will be at the forefront in the coming years because it's clear that being a trade expert is no longer enough; you need to be an expert in customer relations, an expert in the evolution of buildings or structures throughout their lifespan. We're seeing that with the shift towards renovation, we're moving from the act of building itself to housing, to the experience of living in it. I would say that renovating also means taking into account the concept of living, lifestyle, and adapting buildings to uses and behaviors.

For me, this is a key element that will set the pace for the coming years. Obviously, there is a crucial element, which is decarbonization, in terms of materials and digital technology.

AI is very energy-intensive. A reasoned approach to digital development will be necessary to find the right balance and align with this national low-carbon strategy.

The previous standard was to build solid, almost monolithic structures. Today, we are moving towards an approach closer to biomimicry, flexibility, and robustness. The house of tomorrow must be resilient and therefore, like some earthquake-resistant buildings, must be able to oscillate to absorb strong winds, and must be able to take into account the swelling and shrinking of the soil, etc.

We realize that the 21st century will no longer be based on performance but on robustness. Performance is only sustainable in a linear world, somewhat like the one we perhaps mistakenly fostered in the 20th century by thinking, "This is what performance is all about." We can no longer avoid climate change; we must deal with it, we must adapt, and housing must also adapt. Therefore, construction and renovation methods must also make housing more robust.

Batinfo: Can you tell us about the CCCA-BTP and its missions?

Franck Le Nuellec: Le CCCA-BTP (Committee for consultation and coordination of apprenticeship in the building and public works sector) is an association with joint governance of the building and public works sectors.

As a tool for the building and public works sectors, the CCCA-BTP has a dual mandate to promote vocational training in the construction and public works trades: legal and contractual obligations. The CCCA-BTP is funded by annual contributions from companies in the building and public works sector.

Its joint management structure connects it directly to the realities of the building and public works trades and to the skills and professional qualifications needs of construction companies in their territory.

With over 80 years of expertise in work-study training and as an accelerator of innovation in construction industry training, the CCCA-BTP is a key partner for construction training organizations. Through its range of services, it supports them in anticipating changes, increasing their attractiveness, ensuring business development, optimizing their performance, and guaranteeing high-quality training across all regions. The CCCA-BTP is a certification provider for the joint National Joint Committees (CPNE) for the building and public works sectors.

The CCCA-BTP makes innovation a key feature of its work. It supports experiments and innovative projects, designs educational resources and tools adapted to the skills development of apprentices, new forms of learning (virtual and augmented reality, distance learning, hybrid skills, etc.) and the needs of companies.

He created WinLab', the incubator that became a trendsetting hub, to envision the training programs for the construction and public works (BTP) trades of tomorrow, to share, test, experiment with, and deploy educational innovations for the benefit of BTP training organizations. Other services were also created, such as the educational accelerator, which provides BTP training organizations with a selection of innovative and accessible teaching methods and tools to discover and experiment with, as well as the 3C.Academy, to support the skills development of BTP training organizations, regardless of their specific trade.

The CCCA-BTP supports experiments and innovative projects by training organisations in the construction and public works sector, as well as construction and public works companies, with a major program of calls for projects and calls for applications.

CCCA-BTP's expertise makes it a unique player and a privileged partner, capable of supporting all players in the construction sector, to train learners in construction trades and meet the skills and professional qualifications needs of companies in the construction sector and anticipate future developments.

As for me, I am the Director of Development, Marketing and Strategic Innovation at CCCA-BTP. In this role, I link foresight, innovation and operational deployment within the construction industry training ecosystem, with one guiding principle: to transform weak signals (technical, digital, environmental, organizational) more quickly into training developments and concrete responses to the skills-employment gap.

My sectoral role is embodied first and foremost in WinLab', the CCCA-BTP innovation hub, which I lead as a “trend scout”: open innovation, experimentation and networking of stakeholders to bring about the “CFA of tomorrow”.

In parallel, I contribute to structuring a forward-looking analysis of the transformations of professions, such as the Construction Industry Innovation Trends Observatory (CCCA-BTP / OPPBTP / Impulse Partners). This tool was designed to link the analysis of emerging trends to their concrete impacts on professions, prevention, and training needs.

Each year, the WinLab' Innovation Trophies reward innovation, from ideation to massification via experimentation.

All of this work strengthens CCCA-BTP's ability to address the challenges of the construction sector by supporting transformations alongside training organizations. Our national Renoboost program, dedicated to energy renovation, has thus enabled us to precisely identify the needs for successfully completing the "project of the century."

Our commitment to excellence has subsequently translated into funding, through our calls for projects, for the Renovation Ambassadors program led by BTP CFA Occitanie, and, in the future, into the launch of a new Initial Training in Energy Renovation (FIRE) program led by Open Lab Action 21. Today's apprentices are tomorrow's renovators. Let's empower them to carry out energy-efficient home renovations by enabling apprentices in the construction industry to obtain the RGE (Recognized Environmental Guarantor) label.

Underlying this is a simple idea I am defending: innovation is not a "plus", but a lever for attractiveness, prevention and performance, at a time when the construction industry must simultaneously recruit, develop skills and successfully complete its transitions.

Batinfo: Can you explain your role in the Construction Tech Village this year?

Franck Le Nuellec: The CCCA BTP's current position is that we are a unifying force, an aggregator of the 1500 institutions that provide training in the construction industry. We are truly an accelerator of transformation. As I stated at the Bois Construction forum, we have the power to support the transformation of training organizations and the construction trades themselves.

This manifests itself in three ways. The first is the ability to anticipate major societal, environmental, and technological changes in the construction industry, to increase the attractiveness of construction jobs and adapt training programs, and ultimately, to strengthen the professional integration of learners, whether they are retraining or in initial training—namely, young people. Our innovation approach is based on these three levers.

Our goal today is to equip training organizations and support local stakeholders in employment and skills development so that tomorrow begins to be written now. The reason we were so instrumental in creating the Construction Tech Village (1000m²) this year, particularly within BIM World, is because BIM World is increasingly becoming the Digital Twin, the trade show for digital twins, which are now a central element in the building sector and, more broadly, in the construction of tomorrow. We can clearly see that digital twins are involved from the design phase through to maintenance and even deconstruction of buildings. This implies a logic of sustainability and robustness.

It was important for us to have a strong presence at this village of around a hundred startups, alongside key players like our long-standing partners, who are also our board members: CAPEB, FFB, SCOPs, and FNTP, all of whom are represented through the conference program. We also mustn't forget the leaders of our "CFA of Tomorrow" community, such as Les Compagnons du Devoir, the Fédération Compagnonnique, and the BTP CFAs (Ile de France, Centre Val de Loire, Grand Est, Auvergne Rhône Alpes, Nouvelle Aquitaine, Occitanie, Hauts de France, and Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur).

We also wanted, through this village, to create a flagship event which will take place on April 1st, which will be our partners' day, where we will invite around one hundred key partners of the CCCA-BTP in different fields and we will have, such as BPI France, Action Logement, the SMLH, the ADEME, the Caisse des dépôts et consignations, the SMA BTP, PRO BTP, the OPPBTP, Constructys, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of National Education, which are partners for us in shaping the future of skills.

We also have a proactive, forward-looking, almost predictive approach. We are at the heart of the matter concerning the village; we have startups, established companies, and representatives from these companies, along with employers' organizations and training centers. Our role is to facilitate this networking, to act as a matchmaker between startups with projects and training centers that can adapt and align the startup's project with the needs of the construction industry, and to ensure its adoption by employers' organizations. We are here to promote and fund these experiments. We have a substantial budget of several tens of millions of euros per year to foster the emergence of pilot projects that will then be replicated and disseminated to all training organizations to ensure that the sector is better aligned with current needs.

Beyond this networking and opening, we have a program of inspiring conferences that will offer a fresh perspective on what we usually hear, focusing on employment and training. We have a space of nearly 100 square meters dedicated to the Open Bim Game. Alongside this, we will have various workshops that will bring together companies, training organizations, and learners who will come to discover and imagine what the apprenticeship training center (CFA) of tomorrow will be or could be.

The apprenticeship training center (CFA) of tomorrow is a system that brings together key decision-makers from training centers to envision the economic model of a CFA, the learning model—whether hybrid, fully immersive, or completely unstructured—and the skills of the future. And here, we're thinking particularly about the impact of AI on jobs, as I mentioned last week at the École des Ponts during International Week: AI is a bit of a nightmare for white-collar workers. And I would even say it's the revenge of blue-collar workers, with all those technical trades that make up the construction industry regaining some of their prestige in the future.

April 1st and 2nd, 2026 will be extremely eventful, and this event will also allow you to discover our innovation hub, WinLab, which was created almost 8 years ago and aims to open doors to these major changes, these major innovative players, these start-ups.

Of the nearly 70 startups, almost a third will be WinLab startups, contributing to our discussions. This will also be an opportunity for our visitors and partners to discover the solutions offered by Orisha, Once for All, Matériaux.archi, and Action 21, which is currently involved in projects with the CFA BTP Occitanie (a vocational training center for the construction industry in the Occitanie region). We should also note the presence of Alvéoles, which addresses the ecological and societal challenges of tropical construction on a daily basis. I am pleased to officially announce that Alvéoles will be WinLab's official branch in the French overseas territories.