Sounds like you're describing a forward scheduled project leading to a milestone that has a constraint. Personally, I'd probably just put an end constraint on it to say "it's no ok to let this slip past here, but it's ok to finish early". The rest is just a matter of setting up all the tasks leading to the milestone and throw resources at them until the constraint is satisfied.
If you want to artificially push the milestone out to the deadline, put a start constraint on it, too.
There are other ways of accomplishing the same thing, and I'm sure others will chime in with their favorite. In fact, with a truly fixed delivery date I think I might suggest putting an end constraint but no start constraint on the delivery milestone, then setting it to be scheduled as late as possible (ALAP) on the Task: Schedule inspector. It may make sense to set certain prerequisites to be ALAP as well.
If you want to artificially push the milestone out to the deadline, put a start constraint on it, too.
There are other ways of accomplishing the same thing, and I'm sure others will chime in with their favorite. In fact, with a truly fixed delivery date I think I might suggest putting an end constraint but no start constraint on the delivery milestone, then setting it to be scheduled as late as possible (ALAP) on the Task: Schedule inspector. It may make sense to set certain prerequisites to be ALAP as well.
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