A construction draw inspection pays for what the inspector can see installed on the day they walk the site. Material that has been delivered but not installed usually earns nothing. Work spread across five half-done stages earns less than the same labor concentrated into two finished ones. So the schedule that maximizes each draw is not the one that keeps every trade busy. It is the one that puts finished, inspectable stages in front of the inspector on the draw date.
What the inspector is paid to check
The lender sends an inspector, sometimes a third-party firm and sometimes its own staff, to compare the site against the draw schedule attached to the loan. That schedule breaks the loan into lines — foundation, framing, dry-in, rough-ins, drywall, finishes, final — each with a dollar amount or a percentage of the total. The inspector walks the job, photographs it and reports a completion figure for each line. The lender funds that figure, less previous draws and any holdback the loan carries.
The inspector is certifying a physical fact for someone who is lending against the building. That is the whole job. They are not paid to credit effort, read invoices or estimate how close a stage is to done. If the roof is half-shingled, the report says the roof is half-shingled. If the windows are in the garage, the report says no windows are installed. Every sequencing decision in this article follows from that.
Delivered is not installed
Stored materials are the most common gap between what a builder has paid for and what a draw will fund. A lender lends against the value of the improvement. A pallet of windows on site adds no value to the house, can be stolen or damaged and can be driven away. Unless the loan agreement says otherwise, assume delivered-but-not-installed material earns nothing at the next draw.
Some loan agreements do allow stored materials, usually with conditions: paid invoices, proof of insurance, secure storage, sometimes a cap on the amount. Read the agreement before ordering anything large. If it is silent, ask the lender in writing before the delivery, not on the morning of the walk.
Every dollar of material that lands on site a week after a draw inspection is cash the builder floats until the following one — often four to six weeks, depending on how the loan schedules draws. On a long-lead order like windows, cabinets or trusses, that float can be larger than the month's overhead. Time big deliveries to arrive close to their install date, and arrange install dates to fall just before a draw, not just after.
Why half-done stages fund badly
Draw schedules come in two broad shapes, and both reward finished stages. On a fixed-stage loan, a line pays when it is complete and not before — a stage at 90% pays the same as a stage at zero. On a percent-complete loan, the inspector assigns a percentage to each line, and judgments on partial work tend to be conservative because the inspector is the one signing that the value exists. Neither shape pays well for a site where every stage has started and none has finished.
An illustrative example
These numbers are made up to show the mechanism, not drawn from any lender's schedule. Take a $500,000 construction loan where framing is 18% of the loan ($90,000) and dry-in — roof, windows and exterior doors — is 15% ($75,000). The second draw inspection is booked for the 20th. Two ways to spend the same three weeks of crew time:
- Spread across stages: framing 90% done, roof half-shingled, windows delivered and stacked in the garage, rough plumbing started. On a percent-complete loan an inspector might credit $81,000 for framing, perhaps $15,000 on dry-in for the partial roof and a few thousand for plumbing — roughly $100,000. The windows, already paid for, earn nothing. On a fixed-stage loan the draw is close to zero, because no line is finished.
- Concentrated: framing 100%, roof finished, windows and doors installed, rough plumbing not started. Framing funds $90,000 and dry-in funds $75,000 — $165,000 — and the house is weathertight before the rough-in trades arrive.
The labor in both scenarios is similar. The difference is where it was pointed in the week before the walk. The spread-out site looks busier and funds tens of thousands of dollars less, and that gap comes straight out of the builder's working capital until the next draw.
Sequence backward from the draw dates
Most schedules are built forward: start the foundation, add durations, see where the job lands. To fund draws well, the draw dates have to sit on the schedule as fixed points, and the work in front of each one has to be planned backward from it. This is the same logic that makes the job schedule work as a cash flow forecast — the dates that cash arrives are set by when stages finish.
- Get the draw schedule from the lender and map each line to the tasks on the job schedule. If the draw line is 'dry-in', list exactly what the inspector needs to see installed for it to count.
- Put each draw inspection on the schedule as a milestone. If the lender lets the builder request inspections, book them at stage completion rather than on a calendar date.
- For each upcoming draw, name the one or two stages that must be 100% complete on the walk. Those get crews first. Starting a new stage takes a back seat until they are done.
- Work back from those finish dates to set delivery dates. Material should arrive in time to install, not in time to sit through a draw.
- Book the municipal inspections for anything that will be covered — rough plumbing, electrical, mechanical, insulation — so the sign-offs exist before the lender's inspector arrives.
- Check the plan against cash. If a draw is going to land short, the builder needs to know three weeks out, not on the day the wire is smaller than expected.
This does not mean idling a trade to make a draw look tidy. A plumber who can start rough-in without slowing the framing crew should start. The rule is narrower: when crew time is the constraint, finish the stage that funds before starting one that will not.
What the inspector needs on the day
A construction draw inspection is short. The inspector has a list of lines, a camera and other sites to get to. Anything that makes completion hard to see costs money. Before the walk, have these ready:
- Site access: gate code, lockbox, someone who can walk the job and answer questions. An inspector who cannot get in reports nothing.
- Municipal inspection cards or sign-offs for covered work. Once drywall is up, rough-ins cannot be seen, and the lender's inspector may not credit what they cannot verify.
- Dated photos of work before it was covered, tied to the daily log for that day.
- The draw request itself, with each line's claimed percentage matching what is visibly on site. Claiming more than the inspector will see invites a line-by-line dispute that slows the whole draw.
- Any documents the loan agreement requires with each draw — commonly invoices, updated budget and lien waivers from subs and suppliers.
The draw request should read like the client invoice's sibling. If the builder already bills clients by stage of completion, the same discipline applies: claim what is done, show the evidence and keep the line items consistent from one draw to the next so the inspector is not reconciling a new format every month.
Where BuilderSolve fits, and where it does not
In BuilderSolve the schedule is built from the estimate, so the line items behind a draw schedule can be the same items on the Gantt. Draw inspections go on the schedule as milestones, and the stages that must be finished by each one are visible on the same chart as the crews assigned to them. Daily logs carry dated photos, which is the record of what was installed before it was covered. Budget vs. actual shows what has been spent on a job against what has been funded. The AI assistant can draft a schedule shift when a stage slips — for example, pulling a delivery back so it no longer lands the week after a draw — and a person approves or rejects it.
What it does not do: BuilderSolve does not submit draw requests to a lender's portal, book the lender's inspector or decide what a lender will fund. Purchase orders are in development and not shipped, so delivery timing lives on the schedule rather than on a PO today. QuickBooks stays the book of record; BuilderSolve reads from it one way. For builders who would rather not assemble draw packages themselves, the BuilderSolve finance team handles that work — draw requests, waivers from subs and the AR follow-through — alongside the rest of the back office.
Before the next draw
Pull the loan agreement and find two things: the draw schedule lines and the clause on stored materials. Put the next draw date on the schedule. List what must be fully installed on that date, and move crews and deliveries so those stages finish first. Book the municipal inspections for anything that will be covered before then. If the result shows a short draw, adjust the cash flow forecast now, while there are still three weeks to do something about it.
Common questions
what does a construction draw inspection check
A construction draw inspection checks how much of each line on the lender's draw schedule is visibly complete on site. The inspector walks the job, photographs it and reports a completion figure per line — foundation, framing, dry-in, rough-ins and so on. The lender funds based on that report, less previous draws and any holdback. Invoices and delivered materials generally do not count unless the loan agreement allows them.
do construction lenders pay for materials stored on site
Usually not, unless the loan agreement specifically allows it. Lenders lend against installed improvements, and stored material can be stolen, damaged or removed. Some agreements permit stored materials with paid invoices, insurance, secure storage and a dollar cap. If the agreement is silent, ask the lender in writing before a large delivery rather than assuming it will be funded at the next draw.
how do I get a bigger construction draw
Finish stages before the inspection rather than starting several at once. Inspectors credit what is visibly complete, and on fixed-stage loans a stage at 90% can pay nothing. Schedule backward from the draw date, put crews on the stages that must be done, time deliveries to install dates and have municipal sign-offs and dated photos ready for anything covered.
what if drywall covers work before the draw inspector sees it
Have the municipal inspection sign-offs and dated photos ready. Once walls are closed, the lender's inspector cannot see rough plumbing, electrical or insulation, and may not credit what cannot be verified. The safest sequence is to schedule the draw walk before close-in, or at minimum keep the municipal cards and photos tied to the daily log for the day each rough-in was finished.