Effective communication between project managers and engineering teams is critical for the success of construction projects. This article develops a hierarchical (Stackelberg) game-theoretic model, where the manager acts as the leader and engineering teams act as followers. The model quantifies how both the leader and followers balance the benefits and costs associated with increasing communication efforts. We propose a two‐level (Stackelberg) model of strategic interaction between a project manager (leader) and engineering teams (followers) in construction projects. An efficient numerical algorithm is implemented in MATLAB to compute optimal strategies and analyze different project scenarios. Scenario analysis demonstrates how changes in project parameters affect the balance of efforts and profits, thereby guiding managerial recommendations for improving communication and reducing project risks. By considering aspects like risk, time delay, cost overruns, and resistance to change, we provide supervisors and agents communication efficiency functions. Using scenario analysis and numerical optimization, we determine the most efficient communication tactics to match the hierarchical structure of building projects.

Keywords: project efficiency, leader-follower dynamics, profit maximation, project management, communication efforts, time delay, cost overrun, risk, resistance to change