What is a schedule of values in a construction draw?
Every draw request that lands on your desk is built on top of one document: the schedule of values. If you've ever flipped to the back of a pay application and found a long grid of line items, percentages, and dollar amounts, that grid is the SOV. It's worth knowing what that document represents before you sign off on a number.
What the SOV breaks the contract into
A schedule of values takes the contractor's lump-sum price and splits it into line items, usually by trade or phase: site work, foundations, structural steel, mechanical rough-in, drywall, finishes, and so on. Each line carries a dollar value, and the lines add up to the total contract sum. On a typical AIA-style pay application, G702 with the G703 continuation sheet, those line items sit in a grid with columns for the scheduled value, the amount completed to date, the percentage complete, and what's left to bill.
The SOV sets the reference point every draw gets measured against. When the superintendent reports framing at 60% complete, that 60% applies only to the framing line's scheduled value. Get the breakdown wrong at the start, front-load a few line items, bury general conditions inside a trade category, and every draw after that inherits the distortion.
Line items, front-loading, and why owners push back
Contractors have an incentive to weight early line items, mobilization, submittals, general conditions, a little heavy, so they collect more cash in the first few draws than the physical work on site would justify. Some front-loading is normal, and lenders expect a review of the initial SOV before the first draw gets approved. But once that schedule is locked in, each later draw just carries the percentages forward against the same baseline.
The SOV will always add up on paper. The contractor built it that way. What owners and lenders need to check is whether the percent-complete claimed on each line matches what's standing on the ground. A pay app showing 45% complete on the structural steel line should correspond to roughly 45% of that steel erected on site. Confirming that has traditionally meant a site walk, a call to the inspector, or taking the contractor's number on faith.
Reading the draw against what the site shows
This is where a lot of draw reviews run into trouble. The SOV tells you what percentage is claimed, line by line. It doesn't tell you, on its own, what's observed. An owner's rep might get to the site once a month if that. A construction lender's inspector is often covering a handful of projects at once, working from photos the contractor sent in. The gap between the claimed percentage on the SOV and the observed condition is exactly where disputes over draws start, and it's usually found late, after the check has already gone out.
A weekly drone capture measured against the project schedule gives you something to set next to that pay application: a progress map tied to the same line items and the same timeline, built from what was actually there that week instead of from what got reported. Construction Progress turns that comparison into a standing record instead of a one-off site visit, so the percent-complete on the draw has something observed behind it before the money moves.
If you're the one signing off on draws, it's worth having a weekly, independent record of where the work stands before the next pay application shows up.