[7] Glanville's first investigation at the Building Research Station (BRS) was to study how the water permeability of concrete varied and, with Duff Abrams, was one of the first to attribute this primarily to the water-cement ratio and not to the type and proportions of aggregate used.

[2] He continued his work in this field, investigating the bond between concrete and steel reinforcement, shrinkage of the material and creep and flow under load.

[11] His responsibilities encompassed all of the BRS's engineering work including the management of its research, development of equipment and investigations of structural failures as well maintenance and expansion of the station.

His research covered almost every aspect of concrete use in construction and included shrinkage stresses, creeping, and permeability as well as work on indeterminate structures, timber roofs, and curved bracing members.

Collaborating with Geoffrey Grime, W. W. Davies and the Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors he developed a means of estimating the amount of driving force a pile could be exposed to without damage.

[14][5] Glanville, with W. L. Scott, wrote a handbook on the use of the code which has since been continually updated and remains a standard text for concrete design engineers.

[16] Glanville was appointed deputy director and officer in charge after the previous appointee R. G. C. Batson resigned to take up the chair of engineering at Liverpool University.

[6] At the RRL Glanville took on an increasingly more administrative role, devolving research to his assistants, however he still found time to undertake a comprehensive study of the performance of concrete roads.

He also established a section of the laboratory to work exclusively on soil mechanics, a subject which was beginning to come to the fore of building and infrastructure design.

[17] Took on the directorship in April 1939 after Stradling resigned upon appointment as chief scientific officer to the Ministry of Home Security, which had been established to consider matters of air raid precautions as the Second World War loomed.

Glanville sought to bring this within the RRL but disagreements between the Ministry of Transport and DSIR on how the committee's recommendations should be implemented meant that nothing was achieved before the Second World War broke out.

[18] At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 Glanville was put in charge of the research and experiments department of the Ministry of Home Security as chief scientific adviser at the Princes Risborough station.

[2] A meeting called by Dr Edward Appleton, secretary of DSIR, decided that air raid precautions work of the BRS should be transferred to the RRL under Glanville's direction.

The soil section of the BRS, assisted by Glanville, was also responsible for the assessment and categorisation of European beaches prior to the Normandy Landings.

Glanville had a particular interest in explosives and he helped Edward Terrell of the Admiralty's DMWD develop a stone-chip-and-bitumen protective plating "plastic armour" which was installed on the bridges and gun positions of most allied merchant vessels.

[4] The RRL was asked to test samples of plastic armour against machine-gun bullets by the Department of the Inspector of Anti-Aircraft Weapons and Devices in August 1940.

The material supplied proved unsatisfactory but Glanville recommended that the fine grit used in the samples be replaced by larger stone particles.

Work in this field included the testing of anti-shatter treatments for windows, assessing the performance of walls and trenches of different constructions and studying the passage of blast pressures which can cause death without structural damage.

Glanville's department also developed smoke screens to protect high-priority targets (such as factories) from bombardment and studied how vibrations, for example from digging equipment used by bomb disposal teams, could trigger German anti-handling devices.

[18] Glanville sought to make the Road Research Board more independent of the MOT and successfully proposed Sir Clement Hindley as chair in 1943, though he died in May 1944.

Research in this area lead to better tyre materials, zebra crossings, speed limits, and laws regarding the wearing of safety helmets and seat belts.

[28] Glanville declined numerous opportunities to leave the RRL to take up university professorships and senior positions in industry or with the Ministry of Transport; these all offered higher salaries.

[34] He was also concerned that separating the RRL further from government would reduce its standing with the local authorities and police forces and prevent the sharing of confidential information from these parties.

He was also concerned that the RRL may not be able to preserve its objectivity and might be swayed by political pressure; separation of research from politicians, the so-called Haldane principle, had long been customary in Britain.

[32] The minister responsible, Tom Fraser made guarantees to Glanville that the RRL would "continue to function as a separate entity with proper safeguards for its scientific independence".

He had many contacts abroad through his road research and chaired the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) committee which organised the biennial overseas conference.

[2] He was a member of the organising committee of several road related bodies as well as the International Society for Soil Mechanics in 1957 and the ICE conference on civil engineering problems overseas from 1952 to 1970.

[37] Glanville was asked by the president of the International Road Federation to serve as their consultant, a service he provided for ten years, and organised the papers presented at their world meetings in London and Washington.

[47] However the portrayal is somewhat misleading in that it depicts Glanville and the RRL as subordinate to Barnes Wallis whilst this was not the case and both parties worked on an equal footing.

[2] Glanville is featured on a plaque on Imperial College London's Skempton Building, which houses its Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.