Lightning Protection and Conductor Installer Insurance

Lightning protection is bought because of the paperwork as much as the copper, and that is where the liability sits.

A test certificate stating a system is satisfactory goes into a building's records, its insurance file and sometimes a heritage or licensing submission. A property insurer may have given terms, a rate or a higher limit because the building has protection tested at the required interval. A church may be relying on it as part of its maintenance regime. Nobody tests the system again until the next inspection, and nothing demonstrates whether it works until the building is struck.

So the certificate needs to describe reality rather than reach a conclusion. What was tested, what the readings were, what was not accessible and why, what was found defective, and what was recommended with a timescale. A certificate saying satisfactory with no measurements is indefensible, because nothing in it shows what was examined. And because insurers rely on it, professional indemnity belongs on any business issuing certificates, not just on one offering design, which is the gap we see most often in this trade.

Most of the work in this trade is testing systems installed by others, frequently decades ago, and that inherits their problems.

An existing installation may have corroded conductors, failed joints, tapes that have come away from a parapet, a down conductor removed during a reroof, an earth electrode nobody can find, bonding that was never completed, or alterations made by another trade who cut a tape to get a cable through. From the moment you certify it, its condition is your assessment. A defect that should have been identified, and was not, becomes your responsibility when the building is struck.

Which makes the inspection substantive rather than a resistance reading. Trace the system rather than testing the points you can reach, record where access prevented inspection rather than leaving it silent, photograph defects, and state clearly where a system does not meet the standard it is being tested against rather than noting it in passing. Where a client declines recommended remedial work, record the recommendation and the refusal and repeat it at the next test, because an outstanding defect carried silently across three visits is the hardest position to defend.

There is a client expectation gap in this trade that is worth closing in writing on every job.

A structural lightning protection system is designed to conduct a strike safely to earth and prevent fire and structural damage. It is not designed to protect electronics, and a strike to or near a protected building can still destroy a telephone system, a fire alarm panel, an organ, a lift controller, a server or a building management system through conducted and induced surges. Surge protection devices are a separate installation addressing a different problem, and clients routinely assume the conductor system covers both.

So be explicit about what has been provided. State in quotations and certificates what the system is designed to do, say plainly that structural protection does not protect electronic equipment, and recommend surge protection where it is appropriate rather than leaving it unmentioned. Where a client declines it, record that. Otherwise a strike that damages no masonry and destroys a church organ or a school's IT becomes an argument about what the client was told, and a certificate saying satisfactory will be read as covering everything.

This trade works on the highest and least accessible parts of buildings, and the access method is central to both safety and cover.

Conductors run to the top of spires, towers, chimneys, masts and roofs, which means ladder work on a spire, rope access down a tower, a mobile platform at full extension, or steeplejack methods with a ladder system fixed to the structure. The fabric being worked on is frequently historic and already deteriorating, and fixings go into masonry, lead or stone that may not hold them. Add weather at height and dropped objects onto a churchyard or a street below.

So two things need confirming. That the policy explicitly permits the access methods you actually use, because rope access and steeplejack methods are excluded or conditioned on some wordings and that removes how the work is done. And that damage to historic fabric is covered properly, because a fixing that split a stone or damaged lead work is a consented heritage repair rather than a patch. On the safety side, expect questions about rescue arrangements at height, lone working and exclusion zones below.

The certificate is the exposure, not the copper. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.