Abstract: An unmanned aerial vehicle based system, method, and computer program product, for inspection and monitoring construction progress of outdoor power facilities. The method can receive a construction plan and schedule identifying milestones for installation at an outdoor construction site of at least one externally placed piece of equipment specified in the construction plan. A machine learning artificial intelligence processing system identifies, from a set of observed aerial images of the outdoor construction site captured by an unmanned aerial vehicle, at least one externally placed piece of equipment in the outdoor construction site. The identified piece of equipment in the construction site is compared to an expected piece of equipment specified in the construction plan. The difference between identified and expected piece of equipment is reported and the construction schedule can be updated based on the difference. An alert is provided if the difference exceeds a threshold.