RRL's research to the fields of materials and methodologies, research into traffic management and road safety was prohibited. 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. 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. He was appointed assistant director of the RRL in 1936 and director in 1939. Glanville moved with the RRL to share facilities with the Radio Research Station during the Munich crisis of 1938 as the War Office took over their Harmondsworth facilitiy. They returned to Harmondsworth shortly afterwards. 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 insisted on the title being amended from Director of the Road Research Laboaratory to "Director of Road Research", as he believed his remit should encompass all roads research within the DSIR. Later that year a House of Lords select committee (led by Robert Munro, 1st Baron Alness) on road accidents recommended that road safety research body be established as a new board. 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. War work 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. The station was situated here to avoid German air raids. 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. He was granted authority to assign additional staff to the programme and also received staff from the BRS and the National Physical Laboratory. The RRL received additional work from the