Centralizing Draw Management

How I redesigned a construction finance product's fragmented draw workflows into a unified, scalable system that improved efficiency across all loan types

Company

Built Technologies

Role

Product Design Lead

Product

Construction Loan Administration

Dates

2021-2022

The challenge

In 2021, I led discovery sessions with lenders to dig into one of the most critical pain points in our platform: draw management—the process of disbursing funds from a loan. This was the heartbeat of our product and the clearest way customers measured ROI.

The conversations surfaced clear themes, which defined the challenges we set out to solve.

Too many experiences

There were simply too many manifestations of draw management within the product. This spawned from the fact that we were supporting multiple lines of business with different workflows and requirements.

Inefficient queues

Lenders were frustrated with the inefficient queues they were forced to navigate. They wanted to be able to process stale draws first or see those missing external vendor documents.

Transparency gaps

Lenders needed to quickly confirm where funds were going and see inspection context without drilling into every loan

Customization needs

Many emphasized their 'secret sauce' processes and wanted flexibility to filter, sort, and see their data in a way that made sense for them.

Legacy draw experiences in the construction loan administration product

Assorted screenshots of the multiple draw experiences for different lines of business, each with their own set of features and workflows. This was a major pain point for lenders as they had to navigate between multiple experiences to get the information they needed.

Identifying the problem

The patterns made the pain impossible to ignore. Lenders weren't simply inconvenienced—they were blocked from doing their core job efficiently. We captured these frustrations in a problem statement to align the team and chart a path forward.

The problem statement

Managing draws across diverse construction loan products is fragmented and inefficient. Each loan type (consumer, homebuilder, commercial) requires different documentation and review processes, forcing lenders into manual, siloed workflows. This slows down approvals, delays capital deployment, and ultimately reduces earned interest income.

The hypothesis

If we create a centralized hub for draws, we can abstract away product-specific complexity and unify lenders into a single streamlined workflow. This will allow them to move faster through their queues, improve draw turnaround times, and accelerate capital deployment, which increases earned interest across their portfolios.

Additional goals

Reduce information architecture complexity

Collapse multiple legacy pages (segmented by draw status) into a single centralized hub with status filters, reducing context-switching and surfacing the full picture.

Simplify onboarding & training

Provide one consistent interface across loan products, reducing ramp-up time for new users.

Address diverse lender needs at scale

Lenders rely on unique “secret sauce” processes, which previously forced bespoke feature requests. The goal was to introduce customization tools that let them solve their own problems.

Increase developer velocity, efficiency, and delight

Deliver Built's first React frontend, modernizing the stack and deprecating redundant pages, which lowered bug risk and freed up engineering time.

The solution

We introduced the Draw Desk, a centralized page that replaced multiple fragmented screens and became the single queue for draws across all lines of business.

Core design principles

Unified interface

A simple grid-based layout with familiar sorting, filtering, and column controls across all loan types

Lender customization

Supported lender “secret sauce” through customizable saved views (e.g., order by "time in status" or "awaiting inspection”)

Contextual actions

"Draw Cards" provided at-a-glance context and surfaced actions without leaving the page

Loan-specific adaptations

Draw details and calls to action were dynamically rendered based on the loan type

Interface layout

Draws were organized into two sections within the Draw Desk: Active and Historical. Active draws included draws across any status that was not "Transferred" or "Archived".

The draw card detail panel appears when a draw is selected. It contains the draw's details, actions, and context.

The columns menu allows lenders to customize the columns that are displayed in the Draw Desk.

The filters panel allows lenders to filter draws on any column.

The bulk actions panel allows lenders to perform bulk actions on the current selection of draws.

Draw card anatomy

The draw card became the workhorse of the Draw Desk providinga quick snapshot that let lenders see the essentials and take action without ever leaving the page. In redesigning it, I modernized the look and expanded its capabilities so it could flex across use cases. What started as a single component grew into a reusable pattern anytime the product needed to show a draw in miniature.

Saved view selector

Saved views enable lenders to customize the filter, sort, and column selection to enable their "secret sauce" workflows.

We shipped with several "default views" to get lenders started and to support many of the known use cases.

Information architecture

To satisfy the goal of reducing IA complexity, we collapsed multiple legacy pages into a single centralized hub. This simplified the user experience, made training and onboarding easier, and reduced the amount of code needed to support the different loan types and workflows.

Impact

User Adoption

63% monthly usage rate - Draw Desk became the top page in the application, demonstrating strong user adoption and workflow integration

Processing Efficiency

2.75 days average draw turnaround time across all loan types, with Consumer loans at 2.9 days and Homebuilder loans at 1.5 days

Scale & Volume

40,000 draws monthly processed through the unified system, handling over $5B+ in monthly draw volume

Technical Foundation

Established React as the frontend standard, consolidated multiple legacy pages, and improved developer velocity across the platform

Reflection

This initiative reinforced that solving workflow scale problems requires more than UI cleanup. It demanded aligning business incentives (interest income), user needs (faster queues, transparency), and technical strategy (modern stack).

Introducing Saved Views was a pivotal moment—it set the stage for lender-driven customization, allowing them to tailor workflows while reducing the need for bespoke features. This balance of scalability, flexibility, and technical modernization positioned the product to serve lenders across all loan types more effectively. After the release of Draw Desk, saved views became the new standard for several of our grid experiences and became a key part of our product's design system.