The control plane topology has traditionally followed that of the data plane and therefore the design of the former, as well as its resilience, has been addressed in the latter's one. Owing to the fact that a clear separation between control and data planes is a main GMPLS architectural requirement, the control plane in GMPLS networks may describe a different topology than the data plane, even realized over a separated IP network. As a consequence of this, data and control network design become no more linked in such scenarios. In this paper, we design a heuristic algorithm to obtain the optimal GMPLS control plane design, minimizing the network Capital Expenditures (CAPEX) while matching specific resilience requirements. The performance of the heuristic algorithm is compared with exact solutions obtained by solving an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model on several reference network scenarios. Furthermore, its benefits in terms of total execution time are also highlighted.