Audit Trail

What a complete trail contains.

For each draw: the request and its attachments, the inspection order, the report with its photos, their date and location metadata and the inspector who took them, the reviewer's reading of percent complete against the request, the approval or rejection with the reason, and the disbursement record. Across the loan: the budget and every change to it, lien waivers, insurance certificates, permits and the certificate of occupancy. Each item carries who and when, and none of it lives only in one person's inbox.

Where the draw inspection fits.

The inspection is the field evidence in the trail, and it is the piece most often missing or thin. A report that says "framing complete" with two photos and no date is a claim; a report that ties photos to line items, stamps them with GPS and time, and records the reviewer's decision is evidence. What is chain of evidence in construction lending? covers the links between the request, the inspection and the money.

Why it matters for lenders.

Examiners test construction loan monitoring by picking disbursements and asking for what sat behind them. The FDIC's examination procedures for construction and land development lending look at whether disbursements were supported by inspections and documentation, and the interagency real estate lending guidelines expect written loan administration procedures. A trail that lives in email threads and shared drives can be rebuilt, slowly, by the person who remembers where things are; Why do email-based draw workflows create audit issues? explains why that person is the risk.

How RAZE handles it.

Every RAZE inspection carries a status history from order to delivery, photos tied to the draw sheet line items with GPS and time metadata, and, when a report is rejected, the reviewer's reason. The report is built to support audit and exam review; the lender's decision, and the lender's file, stay the lender's.