The construction of the lead tungstate crystal calorimeter for the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is close to completion. The barrel part of the calorimeter composed of 61200 crystals is installed and operated inside CMS. Only 102 readout channels are problematic including the 21 entirely dead, corresponding to 0.17 % and 0.034 %, respectively. All 14648 end-cap crystals are mounted. The electronics installation and commissioning of one end-cap has finished and the second will be finished in few weeks. The construction of the pre-shower detectors installed in front of the end-caps is well advanced. The many challenges of the design and construction imposed by a 4 Tesla magnetic field, radiation levels ranging from 100 kra...