  To adhere to the stringent time and budget requirements of construction
projects, contractors are utilizing prefabricated construction methods to
expedite the construction process. Prefabricated construction methods require
an adequate schedule and understanding by the contractors and constructors to
be successful. The specificity of prefabricated construction often leads to
inefficient scheduling and costly rework time. The designer, contractor, and
constructors must have a strong understanding of the assembly process to
experience the full benefits of the method. At the root of understanding the
assembly process is visualizing how the process is intended to be performed.
Currently, a virtual construction model is used to explain and better visualize
the construction process. However, creating a virtual construction model is
currently time consuming and requires experienced personnel. The proposed
simulation of the virtual assembly will increase the automation of virtual
construction modeling by implementing the data available in a building
information modeling (BIM) model. This paper presents various factors (i.e.,
formalization of construction sequence based on the level of development (LOD))
that needs to be addressed for the development of automated virtual assembly.
Two case studies are presented to demonstrate these factors.
