Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | June 2010 60 B MM Compliance, a leading gaming equipment testing company, says it is the first company authorised to set up a test laboratory in Singapore. “We are the first to achieve such accreditation and we are thrilled about that,” says Moosad Sreedharan, Senior Vice President, Technical Compliance, for BMM. The company hopes to follow up that first by becoming this month the first test lab accredited by Singapore’s Casino Regulatory Authority (CRA). “We are hoping to become the first CRA- accredited test lab in Singapore by the end of June,” says Mr Sreedharan. BMM’s Singapore facility is currently certified to ISO 17025 standards by the Singapore Accreditation Council. This international standard allows the company physically to conduct tests on gaming machines, jackpots and casino central monitoring systems in Singapore. For official purposes, until the Singapore lab is formally approved by the CRA, its results are signed off by BMM in Australia, which already has CRA approval for its Sydney and Melbourne labs. “Singaporeisauniquegamingjurisdiction because Singapore does not accredit test labs by company, but by location of the lab itself,” explains Mr Sreedharan. Probity CRA accreditation for testing labs is a rigorous process taking at least six months and involving background checks on the submitting company and its key employees. That scrutiny includes personal probity checks and inquiries into a company’s financial status. “Currently, there is no accredited facility in Singapore to certify interoperability testing. Once we get our accreditation, it will be very easy for manufacturers—if they have an interoperability issue with equipment— to test it in our Singapore lab,” says Mr Sreedharan. Under its ISO 17025 authorisation, BMM did testing for Las Vegas Sands Corp on the latter’s slot system prior to the opening of the Marina Bay Sands integrated resort in Singapore in April. “We certified the central monitoring system [slot accounting system] operating in MBS and we also did the integration testing for the slots system and the jackpot system there. I was there for about two and a half weeks. The feedback I have had so far is that the system is operating without any errors,” says Mr Sreedharan. Delivery “Everyone is very happy because we worked to very tight schedules and there were some upgrades to be done at the last minute because of some small issues. “For the slot accounting system, we initially did the evaluation in our lab. Once that had been done we took the system into the casino. We know from experience what issues are likely to come up and with what machines, what type of jackpots we should test, etc. So we took a large number of data samples from the relevant machines and did the integration testing to make sure Testing, Testing BMM gets busy in the Singapore market BMM Moosad Sreedharan, BMM Compliance everything was connected correctly, installed correctly and to make sure that functions such as event reportingwere working as they should. We have also recently completed an upgrade to test a new type of promotion.” BMMhas alsodoneworkcertifyinggames on behalf of Singapore’s other integrated resort, Resorts World Sentosa. “BMM is the primary organisation in the Asia Pacific region helping regulators to develop and update technical standards. We have actively participated in the development of Standards published by the CRA and we are an active participant in the development of Australasian gaming machine standards,” he adds. “Currently, we have been contracted by the Tasmanian Gaming Commission to update their Internet gaming technical standards. We are assisting the DICJ in Macau [the territory’s gaming regulator] in coming up with technical standards for gaming machines as well,” says Mr Sreedharan. “We are extremely pleased with the progress we have made in Singapore and we are ready to meet the requirements of any Asia Pacific customers.” BMM Compliance’s Singapore testing laboratory