The concept of “application and innovation” is introduced into the civil engineering specialty construction in this paper. Combined with the development process of construction of our civil engineering specialty to establish a main thread of imparting students’ professional knowledge, innovative spirit and practice ability, from the concept of professional education, experiment and practice base construction, the innovation education, professional training programs, etc., the professional construction research on the “application and innovation” concept is carried out. The work can provide the reference for civil engineering talent training mode in the institute of nationalities.