Capita Architecture has been appointed to design a £300m satellite building at Heathrow Terminal 5.

BAA has already signed up Carillion to construct the T5C building, which will have 3 million passengers every year when it opens in 2010.

The building will be linked to T5 and T5B, the initial satellite building, by an underground transit system.

T5c is the latest large job at Heathrow to be agreed ahead of the retendering of BAA’s design framework. This is due to occur next year, fuelling concerns over whether firms will apply given that many of the larger jobs are out to tender.

One architect said: “You have to wonder who is going to want to be on the framework when all the big jobs have gone. Surely they would need to have some big contracts coming up to tempt people to tender for it.”

A spokesperson for Capita said: “We can confirm that we are design team leaders and architect for T5 concourse C.”

You have to wonder who is going to want to be on the design framework

Architecture source

Capita Architecture was formed in July as a merger of Capita Percy Thomas, Capita Ruddle Wilkinson and Capita Norman + Dawbarn. The constituent architects have worked on parts of Heathrow Terminal 3, Dublin airport and Keflavik airport in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Meanwhile, fears of a brain drain at BAA grew this week after design director Mark Shirburne-Davies left to become development director at developer First Base.

Tony Douglas, the former managing director at BAA Heathrow, left to become chief operating officer of Laing O’Rourke in July.

Jerry Percy left his post as sustainability manager in February to become head of sustainability at Gleeds.