Meet the Team - Rowan Construction Group Carlsbad

Meet the Carlsbad Team Behind Rowan Construction Group Carlsbad

Every crew that walks through your door in Carlsbad answers to the same standard, whether they’re hanging cabinets in La Costa or laying pavers in Bressi Ranch. Grant Rowan built this office on the idea that a customer should know who’s in their home, what they’re qualified to do, and what paperwork they’ll leave behind. These are the people who make that happen.

Our People

Grant Rowan, Owner

Grant started Rowan Construction Group in 2007 after watching too many homeowners in North County get halfway through a remodel and discover the price they’d been quoted wasn’t the price they were going to pay. He’d spent the previous decade running crews for larger firms where change orders were treated like revenue opportunities, not failures of planning. Under The Haven Standard, which Haven acquired Rowan for in 2019, Grant still reviews every written estimate that leaves the Carlsbad office - not because he doesn’t trust his team, but because Clause 1 says the price is written before anyone starts, and he’s the one who answers if it isn’t. He lives in Carlsbad with his family and still carries a tape measure in his truck, though he admits the last time he used it on a job site was a bathroom remodel in Olde Carlsbad where the existing framing turned out to be two inches out of plumb. The fix cost $340 in additional lumber and labor, which he absorbed rather than write a change order for something no one could have predicted. “That’s the difference between a number you can screenshot and a number you can’t,” he says.

Mike T., Lead Technician - Kitchen & Bath

Mike has been with Rowan since 2014, which means he’s installed roughly 340 kitchen and bathroom projects across Carlsbad, from compact condo galley kitchens near the village to full master bath teardowns in Rancho La Costa. He’s certified in wet-area waterproofing through the Tile Council of North America, and he’s the person Grant sends when a customer asks specifically about Schluter-Kerdi membrane systems versus traditional cement board. Mike keeps a notebook of every job he’s done - not for the company, for himself - with sketches of unusual framing conditions and what they cost to resolve. His most useful entry, he says, is from a 2018 kitchen in Calavera Hills where the previous homeowner had run electrical through a load-bearing wall without a header. The discovery added a day of work, but because Mike caught it during demolition and documented it with photos before calling Grant, the customer got a revised scope with a fixed price, not a surprise. He surfs Swami’s before dawn when the swell is up and has been known to leave detailed voice memos about grout color matching.

Sandra K., Senior Installer - Roofing & Exterior

Sandra came to Rowan in 2019 after eight years with a GAF Master Elite contractor in Riverside County, and she handles the roofing, window, and door installations that require someone who can read a structural drawing and explain it to a homeowner without either talking down or going over their head. She’s GAF-certified in both Timberline HDZ and designer shingle systems, and she’s the reason the Carlsbad office can offer the full GAF System Plus warranty rather than the limited coverage some competitors carry. Sandra’s particular skill is identifying what she calls “the lie the roof tells” - the way water damage shows up three feet from where it actually entered, or how a window leak presents as siding failure. In 2021, she traced a persistent leak in a Bressi Ranch home to a missing kick-out flashing that three previous roofers had missed because they were looking at the shingles, not the wall-to-roof transition. She photographed every layer she removed, built a custom flashing detail, and the customer still has those photos in their project file. Sandra commutes from Vista and spends weekends restoring a 1974 Datsun 260Z that she admits may never run.

Derek R., Service Coordinator

Derek is the voice most Carlsbad customers hear first. He answers the phone, schedules the estimates, and manages the photo documentation system that sends every customer their before-and-after record within 24 hours of job completion. He joined Rowan in 2021 after managing dispatch for a commercial HVAC firm where he learned that the difference between a good day and a disaster is usually whether someone confirmed the appointment and noted the gate code. Derek is the person who calls the morning of every job to confirm the crew’s arrival window, and he’s the one who follows up three days later to make sure the photo link worked and the warranty paperwork arrived. He’s not a tradesman by training - he has a degree in communications from Cal State San Marcos - but he’s learned enough from Grant and the crew to spot when an estimate is missing a line item and flag it before the customer sees it. In 2022, he caught a missing permit fee on a fence installation in Aviara that would have cost the customer an extra $287 if it had surfaced mid-project. He lives in Carlsbad with two dogs who do not get along and a backyard fence he installed himself, which he says is “professionally adequate, personally embarrassing.”

Jesse M., Apprentice - General Construction & ADU

Jesse started with Rowan in 2023 through a partnership with MiraCosta College’s construction technology program, and he’s the apprentice Grant assigns when a job involves multiple trades that need to be sequenced correctly. He’s currently working toward his B-license and spends one day a week in classroom instruction while rotating through kitchen, bath, roofing, and framing crews the other four. His current specialty is ADU foundation work - the specific challenges of building on existing Carlsbad lots where setback requirements, slope conditions, and utility locations vary block by block. In his first six months, he assisted on three ADU projects in Carlsbad: a garage conversion in the village, a detached unit in La Costa Valley, and a junior ADU in Olde Carlsbad where the sewer lateral had to be rerouted around a heritage oak. Jesse documents everything on his phone, which Grant says is “annoying until you need it,” and he’s already contributed photos to two customer project records. He grew up in Encinitas and still skateboards to coffee on weekends, though he’s broken his phone twice doing it.

One Standard, Every Job

The Carlsbad crew works under The Haven Standard, the same operating system that governs every Haven brand across California. That means Clause 1 applies whether Mike is installing KraftMaid cabinets or Sandra is laying Owens Corning Duration shingles: the price is written before work starts, the scope is fixed unless a signed change order says otherwise, and the 365-Day Done Right Promise is printed on every contract, not hidden in terms. The background checks, the uniforms, the live person answering calls, the documented photo record on every visit - these aren’t Carlsbad perks, they’re the baseline. What makes the local team different is that they know which Bressi Ranch developments have HOA design review boards, how the coastal moisture in Carlsbad village affects exterior paint curing times, and why a La Costa Valley kitchen remodel needs to account for the area’s harder water when specifying fixtures. That local knowledge, combined with the discipline of a written price and a signed scope, is what keeps Rowan’s Carlsbad projects within a few percent of the number the customer agreed to. Grant Rowan answers for it personally.

Written by Grant Rowan, Owner at Rowan Construction Group Carlsbad, serving Carlsbad since 2007.