What is a draw inspection, and who orders one?
A draw inspection is the step between a contractor's draw request and the money leaving the lender's account. Someone, usually a third party with no stake in the project's timeline, goes out and confirms that the work the sponsor is billing for is in the ground, framed, poured, or installed. No inspection, no release. That's the whole mechanism, and it exists because construction loans fund in pieces, not all at once, and every piece is supposed to match real progress.
Who orders it
The lender orders it, almost always. On a typical construction loan, the loan agreement names an inspecting architect or engineer (sometimes called the construction consultant or IPC, for independent progress certifier) whose job is to review each draw request against the budget, the schedule, and a site visit before signing off. The borrower submits the draw package, usually an AIA G702/G703 or the lender's own form, and the inspector either confirms the percent complete the sponsor claims or kicks it back.
On larger deals, a PE sponsor or the LP side of a project-finance structure may order its own inspection separately from the lender's, especially if the asset is collateral for a credit facility that's getting marked, or if a capital call is tied to a milestone the GC reported weeks ago and nobody on the investment team has walked the site since. The lender's inspector works for the lender. If you're the one deciding whether to fund your share of the next draw, their sign-off doesn't always answer your question.
What the inspection covers
A standard draw inspection checks three things: that the work billed matches work in place, that the stored materials claimed on-site are really on-site (a line item that gets inflated more than people admit), and that nothing material has changed since the last draw that would affect the loan-to-cost ratio. The inspector usually produces a short report, a percent-complete number per line item, and sometimes photos. Those photos are the sponsor's or the GC's, taken on their schedule, from the angles they choose.
That last part is where the process gets thin. A monthly site walk by a licensed inspector is a real check, but it's a point-in-time opinion based largely on what's shown to them, and the photo documentation behind most draw packages is self-reported. If foundation work was supposed to be 100% poured by the last draw and photos show rebar still exposed in half the footprint, that discrepancy usually doesn't surface until someone outside the sponsor's chain looks closely, and by then the draw has often already funded.
Where the lender's process leaves a gap
If you're an associate sitting between a capital call and a sponsor's progress report, the lender's inspection cycle doesn't necessarily run on your timeline, and the inspector's sign-off doesn't tell you whether the footprint matches the acreage in the offering memo or whether the structure that was "90% complete" three months ago has moved since. You want a second, independent read on the asset before your firm wires its share of the draw.
That's the gap a before/after imagery check fills. Site Verification pulls very-high-resolution satellite or aerial imagery of the parcel, compares it against the acreage or footprint stated in the deal documents, and returns a report showing whether construction progress on the ground matches what's been claimed, without relying on the sponsor's own photo set or the GC's percent-complete memo. It confirms, from imagery nobody on the deal controls, that the asset you're about to fund looks like the asset you were told about, information you can set next to the inspecting engineer's signed draw form before your firm wires funds.
If the next draw request lands on your desk and the only backup is a stack of photos from the job site team, it's worth pulling an independent image before you sign off on the wire.