While the Canberra-based health service Aspen's founder Glenn Keys has hardly labelled this global disaster his opportunity, the global footprint of the territory success story has increased significantly since it first stepped in to manage infection control for repatriation flights from Wuhan in January.

Since the outbreak in China, Aspen's international work has included providing support onboard the Diamond Princess in Japan, supporting two 100-bed COVID-19 hospitals in the United States, and staffing facilities in both Canada and the Middle East.

Aspen secured the contracts to roll out 100 testing facilities across Australia, sent clinicians to help test Ruby Princess crew members at Port Kembla, and set up a manufacturing facility in Queensland to help meet the country's personal protective equipment needs.

At home, Aspen was tasked with setting up the Canberra Hospital's $23 million pop-up emergency coronavirus department, a feat achieved in May in just 37 days.

With few cases recorded in the ACT since its construction, Garran Oval's temporary structure has been repurposed as a testing facility.

According to AusTender data for the 2019-20 financial year, Aspen was awarded about $1.2 billion in health department contracts relating to COVID-19 in the first half of 2020.

But despite the company's dominant performance, Aspen's founder didn't go directly into healthcare.

Mr Keys has a mechanical engineering degree from UNSW in Canberra, and studied both aeronautical engineering and flight-test engineering in England.

He was serving in the military with a young family when a posting to Tindal in the Northern Territory forced a change of direction.

"At the time, my wife and I felt like we weren't going to get the level of support we needed for my son, who has Down syndrome," he told the Sunday Canberra Times.

"So we decided, as wonderful as my time and career in the military had been, it was time to get out so we could focus on the children and make sure they had the best opportunities."

When an offer came to help set up a startup from a city of their choosing, the Keys' opted for Canberra as a middle ground between family in Newcastle and Melbourne.

"We thought we'd be here five to six years - that was 25 years ago," Mr Keys said.

Aerospace Technical Services was launched not long after, providing engineering services, design work and flight testing.

The start up worked across Sydney, Canberra and Adelaide and had about 80 staff when its owner chose to sell to a large multinational.

Mr Keys said the experience taught him a lot - including that he wasn't really a "large multinational" kind of guy.

He saw an opportunity to set up Aspen, and he did so with high school friend Andrew Walker back in 2003.

The pair's first big contracts came soon after, with the British government hiring them to clear surgery waiting lists in its public health system. At the same time, they were hired to provide health services during a multinational effort to assist in re-establishing machinery of government in the Solomon Islands.

"So at the same time that we were rolling out surgery waiting lists in the UK, we were also rolling out complete hospital care - so everything from primary care to pathology, dental, surgery, emergency response and aero-medical evacuation, in the Solomon Islands," Mr Keys said.

Bringing waiting list times from two years to six months, then six months to six weeks, Mr Keys and Mr Walker had established the business as a successful international health service provider.

While involved with the company up until the end of 2019, Mr Walker has not been its public face since 2014, due to legal issues which did not involve Aspen. He no longer lives in Australia and has been bought out of the company.

"Andrew and I have been friends since school and we were supportive while he went through that process but what we really focused on was growing Aspen and making it into the company it is today," he said.

When it comes to predicting the current catastrophe, Mr Keys said it's easy to be the best fortune-teller in hindsight.

"Bill Gates had been saying for a while that the biggest issue he saw coming was a pandemic," Mr Keys said.

"There had been a lot of work done to prevent that, Australia did have and does have pandemic plans in place.

"[But] I don't think people expected a pandemic of this level and of this global sweep."

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He said his cross-continent coronavirus experience had led him to believe the creation of a national cabinet could be credited for a lower number of cases than overseas.

"I think we've dealt with the variations as well as you can. I think part of what we've also seen is the requirement that you have to respond to a completely dynamic situation," he said.

Aspen Medical has now taken on Victoria's troubled aged care industry, being contracted to help stop the spread of coronavirus in one of the worst hit facilities in Melbourne.

Residents of St Basil's Homes for the Aged in Melbourne's north were evacuated on Friday after workers tested positive.

Mr Keys said despite the facility coming under fire from families of the residents regarding their handling of the outbreak, he was proud of the job Aspen staff had done.

"These [staff] are people who volunteered to go," he said.

"They have put themselves in what they knew was a hot spot because they knew residents desperately needed their care.

"I think we should laud the people who are willing to put themselves in that position because they know there are people who need it."

Mr Keys said he expected aged care - along with all other aspects of our lives - would be transformed by the pandemic.

"In the same way that 9/11 caused us to think about security in relationship to territory, I think COVID will force us to think about health security," he said.