After graduation, she underwent all the main areas of architectural activity: interior design, environmental design, small architectural forms, individual and semi-detached houses, apartment buildings, public buildings, residential areas. Since the early 2000s worked in the architectural workshop of M. A. Mamoshin as the chief architect of projects at facilities in the historical center of the city.
Since 2011, along with the architectural and design activities, she began to deal with the problems of protection and restoration of cultural heritage sites. She carried out individual restoration projects, carried out work on the certification of architectural monuments. During this period, she received the profession of an art historian, graduating in absentia from the Faculty of Art History of the St Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I. E. Repin. The combination of art history and architecture led to a reorientation from modern architecture to restoration activities and a transition to work at the NIiPI Spetsproektrestavratsiya, after which, in 2014, she moved to Lengiprogor Institute LLC. She supervised the development of projects for sightseeing places in Krasnoyarsk, the project for the historical settlement of Eniseysk in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
In 2017, together with the students of the department, she conducted a historical and cultural study of the Nyandoma railway station in the Arkhangelsk region, built by S. I. Mamontov as part of a single architectural complex of the railway, designed by IGI graduate L. N. Kekushev and I. A. Ivanov-Shits (1895–1900s), developed a project for the site of interest “The complex of the original buildings of the Vologda-Arkhangelsk line of the Northern Railway Station Nyandoma", which was approved and included in the Unified State Register of Monuments. The next project for the improvement of Nyandoma, developed by N. M. Petukhova also with the students of the department, became the winner of the All-Russian competition for the best projects of a comfortable urban environment in small towns and historical settlements in 2020.
Nina Petukhova envolves students of the department to participate in creative competitions. In 2019, a group of students of the department took third place in an international competition to develop a concept for the development of the estate "Guseva lane" (the territory of the innovation center "Skolkovo").
Expert in conducting state historical and cultural expertise, certified by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.
