This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.Stimulated by the growing interest in understanding the actuality of project managing and the need to better understand how front-end project workshops can be efficacious, we aim to turn workshops-as-practice into a meaningful object of inquiry. We operationalise Social Practice Theory by studying the intertwining of materials, skills and meaning in video-recorded micro-episodes in a front-end project workshop. Our findings illustrate how material elements provide sensitive assistance as professional skills are enacted in structuring the project-specific urban development challenge. Our theoretical, methodological and empirical approach makes the characteristic tension of practice between transformation and reproduction accessible for empirical inquiry and theorising from practice, thereby helping to develop project management knowledge that resonates with the experience of the project practitioner.This work was supported in part by the EU FP7-ENERGY- SMARTCITIES-2012 (314277) project STEEP (Systems Thinking for Comprehensive City Efficient Energy Planning) and the EPSRC funded Industrial Doctorate Centre in Systems (Grant EP/G037353/1).