Remote diligence check vs an on-site visit before a capital draw

A draw request lands on your desk with a completion percentage attached, a stack of sponsor photos, and a deadline from the lender's side of the table. The question every associate asks at that point is the same one: do we send someone, or can we clear this from a desk.

There's no single right answer. It depends on what the draw asks you to confirm.

When a site visit is worth the trip

Some things only a person standing on the asset can tell you. Whether the concrete poured last week cured right, for one. Are the HVAC units sitting in the loading bay the spec'd units, or a substitute the GC swapped in without telling anyone. The finish-out on floor three either matches the sample board from the design review or it doesn't, and you can't tell that from above. Interior milestones, material quality, anything that depends on touching or inspecting a surface up close, that's a site-visit job, full stop. No image product replaces a construction manager walking the slab.

A site visit also makes sense when the draw is small relative to the deal, the asset is local, and the marginal cost of sending someone is trivial next to the capital at risk. If your project manager already drives past the site twice a month, you don't need a workaround.

What a remote check actually confirms

The draws that eat your week are the ones three states or three time zones away, where the sponsor's progress photos are the only documentation you have, and where "80% complete" is a number you're being asked to take on faith until the next scheduled visit. For a lot of capital draw diligence, what you need to confirm at the desk stage is narrower than it sounds: does the asset exist where the sponsor says it does, does the footprint match the acreage or square footage in the draw package, and does the structure visible from above look like 80% complete or like 50%.

That's a question a before/after image pair can answer without a flight booked or a travel approval routed through three people. Pull imagery from before the draw period and imagery current to the request, and you can see grading, foundation, structural steel, roofline, and site clearing progress against what the sponsor claimed. If the pad that was supposed to be poured isn't there, you know before you sign off, not after the fact when the lender's auditor asks why the draw got approved on a site that was still dirt.

This is the practical version of desk-based due diligence, and its job is narrower than full inspection. It sorts the draws that can clear from a desk from the ones that still need a person on-site. Site Verification builds exactly this: an on-demand before/after image pair and progress report, built from very-high-resolution satellite or aerial imagery, confirming the asset is there, matches the stated footprint, and shows the progress the draw package claims.

Picking between the two, draw by draw

Treat it as a triage decision, not a policy. Run the remote check first on anything flagged for distance, frequency, or a sponsor track record that makes you want a second set of eyes. If the imagery lines up with the draw package, that's often enough to clear the capital stage gate without a trip. If the footprint doesn't match, the grading looks stalled, or the structure visible from above doesn't resemble the stated percentage, that's your trigger to escalate to an on-site visit, this time with a specific question for the inspector instead of a general walkthrough.

Run it this way and a site verification check decides whether the site visit happens at all. It tells you which draws are routine and which ones need a person on the ground asking harder questions.

If you're clearing a draw on an asset you can't get to this week, run the check before you approve it.