Risk: There are several ways to estimate the level of risk, including height of the building, the location (compared to climate based lightning activity, the exact location or site, the building construction method (particularly if steel is extensively used), the existence and configuration of outdoor wiring, including power entry, and finally the extent of internal wiring, including HVAC control circuits.

Goals: The codes are primarly focused on safety, which means preventing fire and electrocution or injury.

Additional goals, particularly for control circuits, is equipment survival….but this is frequently in addition to minimal building or electrical code requirements.

The basics of protection are:

1. Keep lightning from entering the building. This includes using franklin electrodes, and ground wires or building steel to safely receive and conduct lightning current and discharge on the outside of the building, and drain or discharge into the soil.

2. Keep metal nearby these high current paths from arcing by bonding to such lightning down conductors.

3. Use sufficient electrodes at the soil end of the down conductors to successfully discharge the lightning current into the soil with acceptably low voltage.

4. Put protectors at the entry to the building of ALL outdoor wires, including power entry, cable and phone, and parking lot lights and camera, et cetera. Bond or ground these protectors to the lightning protection ground system.

5. For building with large geometry, such as the seven stories that you mention, subdivide the building into several zones and treat almost as separate building. Use internal protectors for long cable runs, particularly verticle. Keep conductors in the middle core of the building, to separate from high current outside wall conductors. In some tall building, protectors are used every 5 to 10 verticle floors.

I suggest that you join the Lightning Protection and Power Quality yahoo group.

You should be able to post questions and might find local experts who can help you with your requirments, including training.

Please don’t take the above as the entire story, or a solution for a particular problem. This is just a brief opening of a door into a complex topic, for a quick peek……

You might find the sites below to be technical sites with low bias towards specific products.
References :
http:/www.mikeholt.com
http:/www.lightningsafety.com
http://www.lightning.org

Simply run a wire fron the top. Dig a deep hole in the earth and place the wire in it.
References :