Due to the objective factors of large amount of students, shortage of teachers, shortage of funds and so on, the second rank and under colleges and universities have some disadvantages in cultivating innovative talents of building environment and energy application engineering major. Making good use of the platform of subject contests which need only less funds, can effectively make up for these disadvantages. The building environment and energy application engineering major of Lanzhou Jiaotong university takes the subject contests as a platform, through extensive publicity, reasonable organization and careful guidance, to increase significantly the students' operational ability and innovative consciousness of building environment and energy application, It effectively makes up for the inadequacy of traditional training mode, provides new ideas for innovative personnel training of the other major in local colleges and universities.