Research in the Construction Management Research Unit (CMRU) at Dundee University revealed that 20% of those items, whose value is greater than the mean of the total bill, represents 80% of the total bill value. Therefore, only one fifth of the total present jobcard items are needed to build an efficient cost model of the construction process. The construction project could still be managed and controlled effectively by using this 80/20 rule, sometimes known as the principle of cost-significance. Using this philosophy it has been possible to develop a simple resource-based cost model for estimating and control for offshore piping installation based on the principle of resource-significant items. Resource-significant items (rsi’s) are defined as those tasks whose manhours are greater than or equal to the mean manhours of similar tasks within one jobcard. They generally account for 33% of the total number of items and contribute 81% of the jobcard value (excluding fixed items like hydrotests and leak tests and permanent and temporary support). The resource-based cost model comprises a few resource-significant work packages (rswps) sometimes known as the monitoring model. The resource-significant work packages (rswps) represent distinct offshore site activities, which are easily identifiable and measurable. They can predict the total manhours in the jobcard to an average accuracy ranging from ±1.27% to ± 2.35%.