The construction and commissioning of the CMS Silicon Strip Tracker

As the start up date for LHC approaches, the detectors are readying for data taking. Here a review will be given on the construction phase with insights into the various difficulties encountered during the process. An overview will also be given of the commissioning strategy and results obtained so far. The CMS tracker is the largest silicon microstrip detector ever built. Consisting of three main subsystems, Inner Barrel and Disks, Outer Barrel and End Caps, it is 5.4m long and is 2.4m in diameter. Total detector surface is an unprecedented 200m^2 with more than 15000 detector modules. The various integration procedures and quality checks implemented are briefly reviewed. Finally an overview is given of checkout procedures performed at CERN, after the final underground installation of the detector.